#in my own post just to prevent blowback

[perhapsibility]

let's not go supporting terrorist organizations who have the eradication of all jews in their charter, shall we?

HAMAS IS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION WITH A PRIMARY GOAL OF JEWISH GENOCIDE. THEY DO NOT SUPPORT THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE. THEY DO NOT REPRESENT THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE. THEY ARE USING THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE AS HUMAN SHIELDS. THEY DO NOT SUPPORT THE FREEDOM OF PALESTINE. THEY ONLY WANT GENOCIDE

does this mean the state of israel is the good guy here? absolutely fucking not. they have truly brought this violence down upon itself due to the horrific apartheid tactics and violence they have put upon the palestinian people, and their response to the hamas threat has been horrific with the amount of bloodshed they have reigned down upon innocent civilians. They have bombed hospitals and areas they themselves have deemed safe. They have placed seige on gaza and prevented desperately-needed resources such as food and water and fuel from coming in. They have murdered thousands of innocents directly and will continue to be complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands more due to their level of disregard of human life which will allow for mass starvation and disease

but don't you dare "thank god that there's an armed palestinian resistance fighting tooth and nail". THAT IS A GENOCIDAL TERRORIST ORGANIZATION THAT HAS SINGLE HANDED KILLED THE MOST JEWS SINCE THE HOLOCAUST, RAPED AND PILLAGED AND SLAUGHTERED THOUSANDS ON OCTOBER 7TH. THEY STILL HOLD INNOCENT PEOPLE HOSTAGE. these people were living their lives, doing their jobs, spending time with family and friends. hamas tortures, murders, rapes, bombs, mutilates, and kidnaps. they are not an armed palestinian resistance. THEY. FUCKING. ATTACKED. A. MUSIC. FESTIVAL. they are a group with a primary goal of the eradication of the state of israel and the murder of all jews. that's written in their charter. you do not support them.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

End of the line for corporate sovereignty

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

Back in the 1950s, a new, democratically elected Iranian government nationalized foreign oil interests. The UK and the US then backed a coup, deposing the progressive government with one more hospitable to foreign corporations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalization_of_the_Iranian_oil_industry

This nasty piece of geopolitical skullduggery led to the mother-of-all-blowbacks: the Anglo-American puppet regime was toppled by the Ayatollah and his cronies, who have led Iran ever since.

For the US and the UK, the lesson was clear: they needed a less kinetic way to ensure that sovereign countries around the world steered clear of policies that undermined the profits of their oil companies and other commercial giants. Thus, the "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) was born.

The modern ISDS was perfected in the 1990s with the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT). The ECT was meant to foam the runway for western corporations seeking to take over ex-Soviet energy facilities, by making those new post-Glasnost governments promise to never pass laws that would undermine foreign companies' profits.

But as Nick Dearden writes for Jacobin, the western companies that pushed the east into the ECT failed to anticipate that ISDSes have their own form of blowback:

https://jacobin.com/2024/03/energy-charter-treaty-climate-change/

When the 2000s rolled around and countries like the Netherlands and Denmark started to pass rules to limit fossil fuels and promote renewables, German coal companies sued the shit out of these governments and forced them to either back off on their democratically negotiated policies, or to pay gigantic settlements to German corporations.

ISDS settlements are truly grotesque: they're not just a matter of buying out existing investments made by foreign companies and refunding them money spent on them. ISDS tribunals routinely order governments to pay foreign corporations all the profits they might have made from those investments.

For example, the UK company Rockhopper went after Italy for limiting offshore drilling in response to mass protests, and took $350m out of the Italian government. Now, Rockhopper only spent $50m on Adriatic oil exploration – the other $300m was to compensate Rockhopper for the profits it might have made if it actually got to pump oil off the Italian coast.

Governments, both left and right, grew steadily more outraged that ISDSes tied the hands of democratically elected lawmakers and subordinated their national sovereignty to corporate sovereignty. By 2023, nine EU countries were ready to pull out of the ECT.

But the ECT had another trick up its sleeve: a 20-year "sunset" clause that bound countries to go on enforcing the ECT's provisions – including ISDS rulings – for two decades after pulling out of the treaty. This prompted European governments to hit on the strategy of a simultaneous, mass withdrawal from the ECT, which would prevent companies registered in any of the ex-ECT countries from suing under the ECT.

It will not surprise you to learn that the UK did not join this pan-European coalition to wriggle out of the ECT. On the one hand, there's the Tories' commitment to markets above all else (as the Trashfuture podcast often points out, the UK government is the only neoliberal state so committed to austerity that it's actually dismantling its own police force). On the other hand, there's Rishi Sunak's planet-immolating promise to "max out North Sea oil."

But as the rest of the world transitions to renewables, different blocs in the UK – from unions to Tory MPs – are realizing that the country's membership in ECT and its fossil fuel commitment is going to make it a world leader in an increasingly irrelevant boondoggle – and so now the UK is also planning to pull out of the ECT.

As Dearden writes, the oil-loving, market-worshipping UK's departure from the ECT means that the whole idea of ISDSes is in danger. After all, some of the world's poorest countries are also fed up to the eyeballs with ISDSes and threatening to leave treaties that impose them.

One country has already pulled out: Honduras. Honduras is home to Prospera, a libertarian autonomous zone on the island of Roatan. Prospera was born after a US-backed drug kingpin named Porfirio Lobo Sosa overthrew the democratic government of Manuel Zelaya in 2009.

The Lobo Sosa regime established a system of special economic zones (known by their Spanish acronym, "ZEDEs"). Foreign investors who established a ZEDE would be exempted from Honduran law, allowing them to create "charter cities" with their own private criminal and civil code and tax system.

This was so extreme that the Honduran supreme court rejected the plan, so Lobo Sosa fired the court and replaced them with cronies who'd back his play.

A group of crypto bros capitalized on this development, using various ruses to establish a ZEDE on the island of Roatan, a largely English-speaking, Afro-Carribean island known for its marine reserve, its SCUBA diving, and its cruise ship port. This "charter city" included every bizarre idea from the long history of doomed "libertarian exit" projects, so ably recounted in Raymond Craib's excellent 2022 book Adventure Capitalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/14/this-way-to-the-egress/#terra-nullius

Right from the start, Prospera was ill starred. Paul Romer, the Nobel-winning economist most closely associated with the idea of charter cities, disavowed the project. Locals hated it – the tourist shops and restaurants on Roatan all may sport dusty "Bitcoin accepted here" signs, but not one of those shops takes cryptocurrency.

But the real danger to Prospera came from democracy itself. When Xiomara Castro – wife of Manuel Zelaya – was elected president in 2021, she announced an end to the ZEDE program. Prospera countered by suing Honduras under the ISDS provisions of the Central America Free Trade Agreements, seeking $10b, a third of the country's GDP.

In response, President Castro announced her country's departure from CAFTA, and the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes:

https://theintercept.com/2024/03/19/honduras-crypto-investors-world-bank-prospera/

An open letter by progressive economists in support of President Castro condemns ISDSes for costing latinamerican countries $30b in corporate compensation, triggered by laws protecting labor rights, vulnerable ecosystems and the climate:

https://progressive.international/wire/2024-03-18-economists-the-era-of-corporate-supremacy-in-the-international-trade-system-is-coming-to-an-end/en

As Ryan Grim writes for The Intercept, the ZEDE law is wildly unpopular with the Honduran people, and Merrick Garland called the Lobo Sosa regime that created it "a narco-state where violent drug traffickers were allowed to operate with virtual impunity":

https://theintercept.com/2024/03/19/honduras-crypto-investors-world-bank-prospera/

The world's worst people are furious and terrified about Honduras's withdrawal from its ISDS. After 60+ years of wrapping democracy in chains to protect corporate profits, the collapse of the corporate kangaroo courts that override democratic laws represents a serious threat to oligarchy.

As Dearden writes, "elsewhere in the world, ISDS cases have been brought specifically on the basis that governments have not done enough to suppress protest movements in the interests of foreign capital."

It's not just poor countries in the global south, either. When Australia passed a plain-packaging law for tobacco, Philip Morris relocated offshore in order to bring an ISDS case against the Australian government in a bid to remove impediments to tobacco sales:

https://isds.bilaterals.org/?philip-morris-vs-australia-isds

And in 2015, the WTO sanctioned the US government for its "dolphin-safe" tuna labeling, arguing that this eroded the profits of corporations that fished for tuna in ways that killed a lot of dolphins:

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/24/wto-ruling-on-dolphin-safe-tuna-labeling-illustrates-supremacy-of-trade-agreements/

In Canada, the Conservative hero Steven Harper entered into the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement, which banned Canada from passing laws that undermined the profits of Chinese corporations for 31 years (the rule expires in 2045):

https://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/harper-oks-potentially-unconstitutional-china-canada-fipa-deal-coming-force-october-1

Harper's successor, Justin Trudeau, went on to sign the Canada-EU Trade Agreement that Harper negotiated, including its ISDS provisions that let EU corporations override Canadian laws:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-eu-parliament-schulz-ceta-1.3415689

There was a time when any challenge to ISDS was a political third rail. Back in 2015, even hinting that ISDSes should be slightly modified would send corporate thinktanks into a frenzy:

https://www.techdirt.com/2015/07/20/eu-proposes-to-reform-corporate-sovereignty-slightly-us-think-tank-goes-into-panic-mode/

But over the years, there's been a growing consensus that nations can only be sovereign if corporations aren't. It's one thing to treat corporations as "persons," but another thing altogether to elevate them above personhood and subordinate entire nations to their whims.

With the world's richest countries pulling out of ISDSes alongside the world's poorest ones, it's feeling like the end of the road for this particularly nasty form of corporate corruption.

And not a moment too soon.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/27/korporate-kangaroo-kourts/#corporate-sovereignty

Image: ChrisErbach (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UnitedNations_GeneralAssemblyChamber.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[brnest]

So I decided to post my thoughts from AO3 about JJK and how to correct the issues i saw in the next arc. Let me know what you all think.

rant:

I didnt like how gege built up the zenin clan only to throw them away as a plot device for maki's development. I thought the story would take a different turn when megumi was named heir but it felt rushed and extremely contrived, beginning immediately with the round table decision to KILL megumi. I cannot understand why anyone backed this decision. Why would a family that values power, tradition, prestige and inherited techniques so much not just have a duel to decide the leader?

1) It retcons everything we know about the Zenin including Toji's logic for giving megumi away. He knew if megumi had a good technique the family would invest in his development… turned out megumi didn't just have a "good" technique he had THE BEST technique! Toji' concern was never that theyd kill his som but that they'd turn megumi into a POS. Gojo explictly stated that hundreds of years ago a TS and 6E user killed each other in a mock-duel and the 2 families NEVER got over it. So the idea that the zenin would kill a TS user is completely out of the question. Even IF killing Megumi served Naoya, it didnt serve anyone else and goes against the zenins principles.

2)The TS literally puts the zenin on par (or higher) to satoru gojo in terms of strength. With gojo sealed The zenin clan would jet-propel to no1 in jujutsu society, which is what the family WANTS, power and prestige.

3) Megumi canonically had a lot of supporters, so this goes back to my first point that the blowback of killing him wouldve caused mass, internal strife.

4) Maki's massacre. (Ugh...)

So my headcannon is this:

Naoya gets told he isn't gonna be heir and calls the elders to the round table. Since a large portion of the family want megumi as head, naoya issues a challenge/duel on the condition that if naoya wins, megumi becomes an official zenin member but forfeits all rights to ever become clan head (doesnt matter if its on paper or binding vow, point is megumi won't be head). This would enable naoya to stay at the helm, while also boosting the zenins prestige because they'd have the TS under their control. Having a duel would also showcase naoya's talents so he doesnt come off a glass cannon like he did when maki flattens him later to show HER overwhelming strength. This plan makes infinitely more sense to me than what the manga did because it benefits EVERYBODY. Maki wants this. Naoya wants this. And so does the entire clan, because megumi will be a zenin regardless of who wins. It also put megumi in an active role, instead of passive one.

With this simple change, we can explore the characters introduced in the hei unit, tojis backstory/life, mai and makis sisterly bond, megumis leadership acumen, And ofc this would be the perfect time for naoya to reveal the truth about toji: That Satoru gojo is the one who killed him and thats why megumj and tsumiki were alone (in an attempt to turn megumi against satoru).

This change also benefits Maki's character too because after megumi loses, she tells him not to worry because he has enough supporters to drive a split in the clan, so while he can't be head of the zenin he can be head of his OWN faction. (remember this was makis ultimate goal, to have a safe space for mai, thats why she wanted megumi as head in the first place) now I'm skipping details, but ogi catches wind of maki's coup to start a civil war within the clan and throws her in the pits for it (a MUCH better reason to kill her than taking curse tools. I mean maki has been taking curse tools for years and nobody cared!) She becomes toji 2.0 and the story continues along the lines of the canon. Maki still gets her power boost and her revenge on NAOYA's supporters instead of the entire clan so she doesnt come off as a psychopath, and megumi learns the truth. There is even room for potential redemption for naoya should megumi prevent Maki from killing him which eliminates the need for curse naoya (a colossal waste of time)

What do you all think?

[nangbaby]

I'm a member of a model horse group on Facebook and I watched a pile on that was ended by blocking. I'm a mod and this behavior was appalling. Names are changed here to protect the innocent and the guilty.

Asker: someone who knows a decent amount about Breyers and is thinking of buying a very rare, very damaged model: Hey, guys, this model looks like he's covered in oil and some other gross things. The current bid on him is $500. Is he worth that and more if I liberate him? In the absolute worst case scenario, if he's been peed on by a cat, how do I clean him?

Asshole #1: Immediately accuses Asker of scamming and scaring people off/owning the model/not knowing anything

(the model in question looks absolutely gross AND this is a group for exactly that kind of question. I approved the post myself - Asker did nothing wrong)

Known Scammer: Joins in on asshole #1, starts brow beating Asker and joining Asshole #1 in being very rude

Asshole #2: Directly accuses Asker of trying to scam people by posting a picture from eBay

Asker: Proves they are the highest bidder, says they knew the price would rise (it doubled), but they don't know how to clean a damaged model.

Assholes #1&2, And known scammer: proceed to make Asker's life hell for the next two hours, while blatantly saying that Asker doesn't deserve a rare model because they are so stupid

Known Scammer: starts replying with porn gifs to everything Asker posts in the chat

Asshole 1&2: start replying with laugh emojis and tell Asker to soak the model in a mix of bleach, lysol, and ammonia

This only stopped when Asker blocked those three people. This only REALLY stopped when I threw those three people out of the group. Asker was absolutely being harassed. Those three weren't going to stop until they were physically prevented from harassing Asker.

My question is this: should Asker have submitted to their harassment, all over a very valid question? And should I have let those three run amok and ruin the group for everyone else?

Before I answer your question, I believe I should clarify something. When I talk about blocking is bad, it should be noted that I'm talking about places like Tumblr, Twitter, and other social media where one solicits an audience and solicits followers. I'm talking about open forums like Reddit, old-style forums, and to a certain extent Discord where the door is open. I'm not talking about invite-only private groups that require manual approval by moderators to join and view. I'm also not talking about things that involve monetary exchange, because scammers do change an environment from one that is merely unpleasant to one that is legitimately harmful.

That said, in answer to the question, the asker should have just cut and run. People tell me all the time I don't have to say anything and that complaining is whining, so why should an asker be immune to blowback?

As for the three miscreants, that depends. If it's a closed group that no one can see unless they are part of the group, kicking them out is a good idea because the space is personal. If it's an open group that people can easily join and see on Facebook, then, no you shouldn't have kicked them out. They aren't ruining the group. Their actions reflect on them. It's up to the other people of the group to argue against them.

[feelingbluepolitics]

Highest recommendation.

"The student activists who crashed the political arena after the mass shooting last year at their high school in Parkland, Fla., are throwing their weight behind a new and ambitious gun-control program that they hope will set the tone for the debate following the most recent mass shootings and headed into the 2020 elections.

"The students are speaking out for the first time since 31 people were killed in one weekend in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio. They hope their plan — unveiled Wednesday morning — will be considered by [t]rump as well as his Democratic presidential rivals and will serve as a catalyst for a surge of youth voters next year.

"'I think similarly to a lot of the country, I’m in a lot of pain right now,' said David Hogg, 19, a co-founder of March for Our Lives and a survivor of the shooting in February 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. 'You see these shootings on TV every day and very little happening around it. It’s painful to watch.'

..."March for Our Lives has been focused on voter registration and outreach across the country over the past year and a half, building a national infrastructure with more than 100 chapters centered on grass-roots organizing. They hope to turn that into droves of voters at the polls next year.

"Called 'A Peace Plan for a Safer America,' the ambitious platform, which was obtained by The Washington Post, goes much further than the current debate over universal background checks and 'red flag' laws, which would apply to people who could be a danger to themselves and others.

"After El Paso and Dayton, [t]rump signaled that he was open to both ideas, but he told National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre on Tuesday that universal background checks are now off the table.

"The Peace Plan would create a national licensing and gun registry, long a nonstarter with gun rights advocates; ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines; implement a mandatory gun buyback program; and install a 'national director of gun violence prevention' who would report directly to the president and coordinate the federal response to what advocates call a national public health emergency.

"It would dramatically increase restrictions around owning guns in ways sure to spark fierce blowback, including raising the age to 21 from 18 for those who want to buy guns. It calls for a 'multi-step' gun licensing system, overseen by a federal agency, that would include in-person interviews and a 10-day wait before gun purchases are approved. The license would be renewed annually.

"In the vein of the Green New Deal, the Peace Plan takes a holistic approach to gun violence by also calling for automatic voter registration when those eligible turn 18, along with the creation of a 'Safety Corps,' which the authors compare to a Peace Corps for gun violence prevention. The plan also proposes community-based solutions like mental health services, as well as programs to address and prevent suicide, domestic violence and urban violence.

"'It’s bold. It’s nothing like anyone else is proposing. We are really setting audacious goals,' said Tyah-Amoy Roberts, a Parkland survivor who is on the March for Our Lives board of directors. 'And more than anything, what we are seeking to do is be intersectional. We know and acknowledge every day that gun violence prevention is not just about preventing mass shootings.'

"'We are changing the conversation around gun violence itself because we don’t want the narrative to come from people who haven’t experienced it — to come from people who benefit from the sale of guns. We want the narrative to come from people who understand it from its very root.'

"'My hope is that they focus like a laser on youth turnout,' Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said of March for Our Lives’s 2020 efforts, after reviewing the proposal. 'The election is over the minute young people decide to turn out. The only reason that [t]rump would get reelected is if young people stay home. The issue of gun violence is one of the only issues that truly motivate young people to shake off their indifference and aversion to voting.'

..."March for Our Lives is calling for a mandatory buyback of all assault weapons and a voluntary buyback of handguns and other firearms."

[verycleverboy]

Here’s another one you’re not gonna read...

(...because it’s excruciatingly long, not because it isn’t necessary.)

One of my most faithful followers (unless I’m confusing him with someone else, because what little blowback I get from the other side of the street tends to bleed together these days) checked in about a different post I made for this story, which I entitled (checks notes) ”Geriatric toddler threatens to dismiss a branch of the government during a national emergency unless he gets the toys that he wants”:

First of all, hope you’re doing well in the current situation, and thank you for your thoughtful analysis of the first two words of a joke headline.

The Washington Post article that joke was attached to goes into the president’s threat last week to dismiss Congress under the never-used Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, with the goal of making recess appointments that bypassed the hearings that have tripped up several high-profile nominees.

Like a lot of things that literally every other POTUS before the current one never attempted, there’s a pretty spirited debate as to what conditions would have to be fulfilled for Trump to successfully pull this maneuver off, assuming it’s not all bluster and no muster. One major condition that would have to exist is that the Senate and the House would have to be in disagreement on adjournment, and according to the National Law Journal, there is no disagreement between the chambers at the moment. The current session officially adjourns on January 3, 2021. So until circumstances prove otherwise, we have to operate under the assumption that he can, in fact, exercise this extraordinary Constitutional power...under a narrow set of conditions which don’t exist right now.

The reason he’s making this threat, and why his supplemental threat to “take it to the courts” is toothless, is that the last man in his current position tried to make a recess appointment between the type of pro forma sessions we’re dealing with now and was shot down by a unanimous Supreme Court decision, one which reaffirmed that Congress is done when Congress says it’s done. 

But one justice went a little bit further in his concurring opinion, issuing a warning about any court decision that “transforms the recess-appointment power from a tool carefully designed to fill a narrow and specific need into a weapon to be wielded by future presidents against future Senates.”

“The Recess Appointments Clause therefore is, or rather, should be, an anachronism—’essentially an historic relic, something whose original purpose has disappeared,’” the justice wrote. “The need it was designed to fill no longer exists, and its only remaining use is the ignoble one of enabling the president to circumvent the Senate’s role in the appointment process.” 

Antonin Scalia, ladies and gentlemen.

Here’s where things get interesting, though, because the statement that came from Mitch McConnell’s office, at least if you squint hard enough, signals “I feel ya, bro, but focus.”:  “The Leader pledged to find ways to confirm nominees considered mission-critical to the COVID-19 pandemic, but under Senate rules will take consent from Leader Schumer.”

Which brings us back to our article up there...

What qualifies as “mission-critical to the COVID-19 pandemic”? There are a few nominees that are cooling their heels at the moment, but for the Voice of America (and yes, now is when we finally get to the linked article), one of them strikes pretty close to home.

U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to adjourn Congress because lawmakers have not approved his candidates for senior posts in his administration, including his nominee to run the independent agency overseeing the Voice of America.[...]

Documentary filmmaker Michael Pack, whom Trump has selected to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, is one of 15 key nominees awaiting confirmation by the Senate. Trump cited Pack by name (but erroneously identified the body he would head as USAGM’s predecessor agency, the Broadcasting Board of Governors). 

Michael Pack is a self-described conservative documentary filmmaker, one who has done work with Trump’s ex-chief strategist Steve Bannon. And there’s a pretty damn good reason why the confirmation committee pumped the brakes on his nomination (per CNBC).:

The “problematic revelations” that Menendez says he discovered just before Pack’s confirmation hearing in 2019 include “whether Mr. Pack engaged in inappropriate or unlawful activity related to transactions between his business (Manifold Productions) and his non-profit (Public Media Lab)” and “whether Mr. Pack engaged in self-dealing while in a leadership position at the Claremont Institute through the awarding of a contract to Manifold” even though that company doesn’t appear to have any qualifications to act as a vendor to the conservative think tank.

The letter to Meadows also sheds light on another aspect of Pack’s confirmation, which is that the Democratic committee leader has asked Pack to provide documents and answers to a variety of questions that could clear up these issues, only for Trump’s nominee to respond in a “perfunctory and inadequate” way.

“More than seven months have gone by since my initial questions. Mr. Pack has yet to provide the Committee with the requested information or to engage in a good-faith and serious effort to do so,” Menendez said.

So when confronted with his unethical, possibly illegal wrongdoing, Pack stonewalled, the way all this president’s men do. Sounds like a great guy to trust with public funds.

But seriously, why is this “mission critical to the COVID-19 pandemic”? 

Back to VOA:

Pack’s nomination has “been stuck in committee for two years, preventing us from managing the Voice of America — very important,” the president said. “And if you heard what’s coming out of the Voice of America, it’s disgusting. The things they say are disgusting toward our country. And Michael Pack would get in and do a great job, but he’s been waiting for two years — can’t get him approved.”   

Disgusting, you say? Let’s settle into that accusation for a hot minute.

Here’s the deal about the VOA: It went on the air on February 9, 1942, a little over two months after America found itself pulled into a global conflict of a massive scale with the actual, non-metaphorical Nazi government which had steamrolled over the European continent. That first broadcast came from a small studio in New York City, directed at an aggressor nation which had developed a robust system of delivering misinformation to its enemies. 

So how do you combat lies? Double down on honesty.

“This is a voice speaking from America, a voice from America at war. Our voices are coming to you from New York, across the Atlantic Ocean to London, from where they are relayed to you in Germany. Today, America has been at war for 79 days. Daily at this time, we shall speak to you about America and the war. The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth.“

“The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth.” I’ve never been a journalist, but the first time I read those words I was thunderstruck. In the simplest language possible, there’s the Platonic ideal of what news reporting is supposed to be. It also sets a high bar for how the United States presents itself to the world. We could argue all day on how many American organizations live up to those words, how many American administrations live up to those words, or if any configuration of the American government is equipped to be honest and forthright in every imaginable situation. But that’s the resolution, the goal for all the world to see.

So what is the “disgusting” VOA coverage that President Trump is complaining about? If we look at some recent headlines, we might get a hint.:

US Nowhere Near Ready for Business as Usual, Former CDC Head Says

Fauci: US Economy Won’t Recover Until Coronavirus Controlled

WHO Chief: Worst on Coronavirus Pandemic Yet to Come

WHO Fears US Funding Cuts Will Roll Back Health Gains in Africa

If you actually read these, they’re nothing more than articles recounting expert assessments of the potential consequences of federal actions (or, just as often, inactions) connected to our coronavirus response. Addressing these things in the public square is usually meant to be a corrective, especially when your chief executive pays more attention to the media than his own advisors, and that a broadcast outlet funded by the US government isn’t afraid to publicize criticism of government decisions gives our entire system a much-needed shot of credibility.

But Trump has never been able to take even constructive criticism as anything other than a personal insult, an attitude which he magnifies by using the power of the highest office in the country to scream “FAKE! FAKE! FAKE! FAKE!” at the top of his lungs whenever he sees or hears something that hurts his feelings. 

The only conclusion I can draw is that he wants the Voice of America to be more like the Voice of Korea, and the “mission critical” part of this gambit is that the VOA’s editorial independence distracts and confuses him. Do I seriously think the beacon of the Cold War era, the organization whose current director proudly proclaims “We export the First Amendment,” is going to be converted into a shoddy simulation of the old Eastern bloc broadcasters? Of course not. Would I put it past the current chief executive to at least try, destroying the VOA’s credibility to redesign it into yet another monument to himself? Not a shadow of a doubt.

“The news may be good or bad. We shall tell you the truth.” It’s a core element of America’s self-image, and the image we project to friends and foes alike. And the 45th President of the United States thinks that’s disgusting. 

Because he doesn’t want the truth. He wants to be soothed and coddled. He wants a cookie and a story before bedtime. You know, like a toddler.

(PS: For the record, the “very clever boy” in this account’s original title was always intended to be Donald Trump, because, as you probably figured out a long time ago, I don’t view him as very clever, nor has he been a boy for quite some time. I changed the official name of the blog to Trump Happens because some people don’t get sarcasm.)

[resonanteye]

via http://resonanteye.net/current-events-condensed/

current events; condensed

A condensed post including short writings on current events.

CONSPIRACIES ARE NOT SECRET IN THIS CENTURY

open up? conspiracies? here’s the real one.

  if They want to “cull the weak” and control us better, what better way than to present a false choice between going back to work and risking lives, or slowly going broke at home?

it’s a false choice. there are hoarders, greedy fucks holding money they’re not entitled to, billions. enough for everything to be covered. hell, the Pentagon LOST enough money to pay EVERYONE’S rent and mortgage for the best six months. LOST IT.

The conspiracy? PRETEND THAT MONEY ISN’T THERE. force people to fight over scraps, pretend there are only two options. don’t let people come together and agree that TOO MUCH MONEY IS IN TOO FEW HANDS, because that might mean we can beat this thing.

unity among the poor? PREVENT AT ALL COSTS. if you kill a few hundred thousand people in the process, fuck it. that doesn’t matter to Them. They want to keep their grip on power, forcing us to behave like serfs working at their pleasure, dying for their capital gains. Living in their damn bunkers.

There is more than these two choices, don’t let them suck you in. the current garbage video circulating is MORE OF THEIR SHIT. it’s part of this. it’s not “secret info” or “exposing an evil plan”.

to get what They want – they’ve just got to keep us arguing about whether to open up or not. that’s it. that’s all they’ve got to do. circulate some fake anti science garbage to make sure it goes over easy.

and murder a ton of people to make another dollar.

THAT’S your conspiracy. THERE’S your elite takeover.

they don’t need micro chips, 5g, or any of this other shit. vaccines aren’t “Them”, the anti vax movement is THEM trying to murder the “useless”.

” WAKE UP, SHEEPLE ” it’s obvious as fuck and you don’t need to go out on any limbs to see it. it’s plain as day. they’re saying it out loud. there’s no need for this conspiracy to be secret. half of you are HAPPY TO JOIN IN.

stop that. join together. fight for the end of greedy leeches stealing from us then pretending that money is gone and they can’t help. the big banks? THEY FUCKING OWE US ONE. it’s time we collect, TOGETHER. right/left/middle. all of us. they owe all of us.

Divine is disgusted by slumming yuppies

SEGREGATION, A REAL THING

in a post about this photo, someone from Europe, younger, asked if segregation was a real thing, a real law in the US. comments were then closed, so I’ll post my reply here instead, in case anyone was not aware.

Elvis sits to eat at a segregated lunch counter while an elderly black woman stands, waiting for food to take away. she’s not allowed to sit there.

it was law, and when it wasn’t the law it was the unspoken rule, for a very long time.

lunch counter (restaurants of all kinds), bus sections, bathrooms, water faucets and schools were separated by race. the fight to desegregate schools is most well known, as it lasted a very long time and required buses, because people of color had also been segregated by neighborhood- many towns refused to sell and owners refused to rent to anyone of color in a “white area”. (the TV show “the Jeffersons” addresses this, and it’s also known as “redlining”)

many politicians on both sides of the aisle supported it, but the Democratic party eventually worked to pass the civil rights amendment and related bills to stop it, although there were those in the party who still argued in favor of these laws.

https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-said-desegregation-would-create-a-racial-jungle-2019-7

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Maddox

(of note- this happened after desegregation, that’s how strongly politicians felt about it! ten years in and they were still arguing that it had been a good thing.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_resistance

after it legally ended, thanks to the civil rights movement, there was blowback; people trying to vote, to eat lunch, ride the bus, go to school, were viciously attacked by crowds or groups of white people.

FILE – In this May 28, 1963 file photo, a group of whites pour sugar, ketchup and mustard over the heads of Tougaloo College student demonstrators at a sit-in demonstration at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Jackson, Miss. Seated at the counter, from left, are Tougaloo College professor John Salter,and students Joan Trumpauer and Anne Moody. John Salter, who also used the name John Hunter Gray, died Monday, Jan. 7, 2019 at his home in Pocatello, Idaho. Relatives say he was 84 when he died Monday after an illness. (Fred Blackwell/The Clarion-Ledger via AP, File) ORG XMIT: MSJAD701

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Riders https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

during this time, due to so much police and community violence, the Black Panther formed to monitor and protect people.

https://www.wglt.org/post/director-chronicles-black-panthers-rise-new-tactics-were-needed#stream/0

members of the Black Panthers, preparing to feed the community

GENERATION X

sure, we are slackers. yeah. we’re ok with staying home. you have just told a generation of latchkey tech addicts raised during the bridge from antenna TVs to HD internet streaming to sit at home. if you’d feed us, we wouldn’t even blink at it. this quarantine stuff? that’s not the hard thing.

but we’re watching friends and family die. a lot of us have been down this road before. we’ve watched right wing pigs (yes, I’ll say it) allow our friends to die before. we’ve been down this road of denial and greed and prejudice and all of it. we’ve seen what happens when politicians value money and ego over human lives, and we know it SUCKS ASS.

hell, we watched Reagan. Bush. Bush. Clinton, too-he was only a hair better. and so-

when we need to, we pound the pavement. we toss the bricks. we get arrested. we wipe mace out of our eyes and stampede.

we always tend to be masked, regardless of standards of the moment. I don’t think, in my life, I’ve been to a protest that didn’t have a contingent of masked people wishing to avoid cameras. Now, a protest for actual assistance for people? a real protest, a fight for better conditions, the 300-some strikes that have happened that the news ISN’T covering? yeah. surgical masks. they’re brilliant photos, but not as interesting for the crap media as a few fat guys with guns.

because that’s the joke they want to show us, yeah? not people actually fighting in solidarity, to protect each other, get better work conditions, protect the disabled, get better healthcare for all, support people financially… the shit the majority of people really want. no. they’re not covering that real shit.

the news, they like a spectacle.

we need to find ways to make the facts spectacular.

I have rarely seen my generation protest FOR corporate interests and find any such thing suspicious as all fuck. I don’t believe a bit of that shit. That’s paid for, that’s arranged, that’s a pony show. That’s the same tiny batch of zonked out cultists that don’t have a trump rally to travel to right now. it’s like a damn road show, the same hundred people, like some Boomer deadhead traveling bus shit. I don’t trust it and I don’t believe it. the older folks at them, yeah. they’re that little band of travelers. sure. but us?

Seattle police use gas to push back World Trade Organization protesters in downtown Seattle Tuesday, Nov. 30, 1999. The protests delayed the opening of the WTO third ministerial conference. (AP Photo/Eric Draper)

because even though we will go do Things, we are, in fact, ok with staying home.

and we don’t like your fucking company. and corporations bought our music and art and killed it in front of our eyes, and there’s no getting our trust back. and we will wear a goddamn busted ass thrift store sack before we spend money on slave-sewn clothes. and we would rather read and write and play music and watch movies all damn day, than go to jobs in cubicles.

War protesters and march to Gas Works Park protesting the US involvement in the Persian Gulf and the buid up to war against Irag January 15 deadline 1991 Seattle Washington State USA

I mean, we’ll usually go, because we gotta eat. so feed us. give us bread. you already poisoned the roses.

  THE ASSHOLE FACTORY

this is where your conspiracy videos are made. in the asshole factory.

what do you notice about these photos? do you see the threats? what kind of people are there?

it is almost like there’s a monthly event they’ve been going to, that’s been cancelled, where they could hold up trump signs and boo anything reasonable… wonder what that event is. where have you seen some of these faces before? I’ve seen a few in the rally photos and videos.

check out “small business” guy. who is he? does he own a “small business”, you think? (photos by Orin Louis)

  ON THE PANDEMIC

a lot of people talking about immunity/reinfection and that study.

that study is just saying we don’t know yet. we just don’t know yet.

it’s early days.

Coronavirus is not influenza, they’re two different families of virus. VERY different.

this is more related to the common cold (in its behavior)than to the flu. (the cold is a rhinovirus. SARS & MERS, and Covid-19, if you want to find out more about these viruses, don’t look up the flu-they are Coronaviruses.)

it is contagious the way a cold is, but it has serious effects on any part of the body with ace2 receptors. (simply put- blood, lungs, heart, kidneys, brain)

they have been working on a cold vaccine for decades. no success. BUT. again, it’s early days. there’s never been this kind of pressure for a vaccine for it. so, to be direct: we don’t know yet. they’ve never been this desperate, this well funded, to find a cold vaccine.

this could be a seasonal thing, eventually- it could mutate to be less lethal and become just another cold we can get every year. it could mutate to be even more vicious and we all are in serious danger all the time. it could create immunity, and some will be ok for a year or a month or a decade… it might not, and people can catch it again and worse.

we just don’t know yet. the whole reason we are isolating the way we are is to buy time for science to find these answers. we’re not in quarantine to “kill it off” or stop it. we are slowing it down so science can have time to find answers, so less of us die while that happens.

  every day we don’t infect other people, is a day in which researchers can work. we need them to work. they are doing that. every day we don’t infect other people, is a day this virus doesn’t get a chance to mutate and change. this helps a lot.

science needs time. all this economic mayhem- it’s to buy them time to help us, to figure it out. the answers won’t come right away and during this time we may hear things that are being tried and tested, some may not work at all, some may be worse than nothing, so information won’t be steady or always correct. when you read a thing, wait a day. read more about it. read the actual study- and if you can’t, wait a few days and read what scientific sources say about it (the lancet, NEJM, etc). don’t rely on NBC, fox, etc to do a great job reporting on science. you’ll have to have patience, even science is having to watch and wait while things are researched, right now.

nobody has the answers; it’s NOVEL. brand new.

they’re testing, they’re researching, they’re learning this thing’s secrets as fast as they can, while we wait that process out.

be as safe as you can be while we buy them the time.

image: pink pangolin drawing in frame

  COMMON SENSE KNOWLEDGE

FOR ACCURACY

You shouldn’t leave the house unless you absolutely have to: food, medicine, or other necessity of life. This includes going to other people’s houses.

Masks are good at protecting others if you are infected, and help protect you too, just not as much as others. Wear one.

Stores are closed, unless they provide food or medicine. Alcohol is a necessity for alcoholics who will have actual seizures and could die from withdrawal, so some of those are open. (Some states have been pressured into letting other things stay open, and people insist on going to church and being able to buy guns in public stores, but that’s political shit and you shouldn’t go places unless you have to.)

This virus is deadly to many people, even healthy ones, is as contagious as a common cold, and has killed more people in a month than the flu does in a year. You don’t want to catch it, and if you do, you want to catch it when doctors and nurses aren’t overworked from other people catching it too. There are 8 strains identified right now. This will change over time, because it’ll mutate- like every virus. EVERY virus.

Glovesw help, unless you change them after touching a contaminated surface. They’re good if used properly and if you’re not sure how to do that, don’t bother. Just wash your hands often.

Everyonen to stay home, but you can go outside- away from people. Staying a good distance from people is really the whole point of staying home.

There will be shortages of some things at the grocery store as supplies run out, and as things are shipped to replace them. Chill out.

The virus does spread through and sometimes kill children, but we weren’t aware of this until we had better information.

You will have many symptoms when you are sick, but you will be contagious for up to two weeks before you get sick. YOU WILL BE CONTAGIOUS WITH NO TEMPERATURE OR SYMPTOMS.

You really shouldn’t be eating restaurant food, unless you can reheat it. Wipe down or wash off your groceries.

You are safe if you maintain six feet distance from others, if everyone is masked and nobody is coughing or sneezing. If they are, you need about 27 feet of distance. Keep space from people.

The virus remains active on different surfaces for a time. The surface being porous may or may not matter; like many things, research by science will give better answers as they have time to figure it out.

We count the number of deaths but we don’t know how many people are infected because most places have not got enough tests to see who is infected. Until we can test everyone, stay home, stay away from people.

We have no treatment. There are clinical trials of many different drugs and at least one vaccine, right now, but it will take time to find out what works.

We should stay away from people to avoid spreading this virus until scientists can offer a treatment or preventative measure like a vaccine. There is no reason to infect people, help the virus mutate, or fuck around with this.

If you are an essential worker of ANY kind, you deserve a living wage, hazard pay, full PPE and kindness from everyone who needs you right now. we should be fighting for your safety, not to make things more dangerous for you.

Stop spreading misinformation. Science doesn’t know everything about this yet, information can and will change or become more specific as time goes by. Yes, business interests and governments have handled the entire thing like a clown show, but you don’t have to be part of making it worse.

  THE VALIDITY OF PROTESTING IN THIS TIME

protest for:

stronger unions

better pay

stronger social safety nets during a pandemic

your right to own and bear arms

your freedom of speech/freedom from unwarranted surveillance

safer working conditions

medical care for all

free education

fair elections

physical safety from police violence

safety from racist/hate crimes

NOT FOR:

fuck, BUYING things. don’t protest to be able to go buy shit? what the hell is wrong with you?!? you can buy a gun next month, dipshit. you can buy through private sale. fuck all the way off with that.

SOMEONE ELSE TO WAIT ON YOU (haircuts, restaurants, nails, tattoos, etc)

the right to block hospital entrances (we all saw the footage, shut the fuck up)

the right to gigantic church services during a pandemic. YOU CAN DO LIKE GRANDPA DID AND WATCH YOUR PREACHER ON THE TEE VEE.

going to a shit job that you’ve never liked instead of all the things above that would have allowed you to get through this shit without starving to begin with

by the way, local seed and feed stores are open nation wide; agriculture is considered an essential business. you can’t buy whatever the fuck at wallymart right now though, SO SORRY. maybe don’t even fucking shop there?

edit to add; if they were only endangering themselves I wouldn’t give a shit – but you know these fuckers are getting too close to store cashiers, walking the wrong way down narrow aisles, and touching every-fuckin-thing.

  also: 81% of people polled, from EVERY political group, think they should be staying home. and agree with that. THIS IS A CRAP PROTEST BY A TINY, UNIMPORTANT GROUP and should not be getting the coverage it is. they aren’t enough to restore an economy, let alone fill a small concert hall.

    I may split these into separate posts, if you’d like that, comment so I know people need/want that.

[lyftuberwomendrivers-blog]

Rideshare exploded on the scene roughly a decade ago. The concept was a brilliant marriage between technology, and transportation. Millions were now able to hail a ride within minutes, just from the tap of a button. No more grumpy cab drivers, or having to wait long pickup times based on your zip code (i.e. region discrimination). Rideshare work began attracting those in need of supplemental income, entrepreneurs, retirees, and creative types who enjoyed the freedom and flexibility gig work provides. It also attracted women drivers, who are only %14 of all Uber drivers according to Forbes.  

What types of violent incidents are reported by female drivers, and at what frequency? How does rideshare driver safety, fare in relation to other occupations for women? Well, unfortunately both companies have avoided sharing any specific information at this time. There are no comprehensive reports, figures, or studies done on rideshare driver related incidents involving violence. We can only speculate these companies purposely omit this data in order to protect their reputation and therefore bottom line. Both companies have recently filed their much anticipated IPO’s.  

Comparisons

Taxi workplace violence statistics do remain open to the public fortunately. An article by OnLabor (a workers rights advocacy group) states: “the homicide rate for cab drivers is about 30 times higher than the national homicide average for all workers.” While that statistic is very troubling, rideshare drivers can breathe a collective sigh of relief. Glaring distinctions exist between taxi and ridehare drivers. The most significant being; rideshare drivers deal with cashless transactions, this alone decreases the likelihood of being targeted for cash robberies, a huge motivation for violence against taxi drivers.  

Another distinction is: rideshare vehicles are not hailed in a random fashion like taxi cabs. While yes, both are paired with strangers, rideshare fares are hailed specifically via an app, linked to a credit card holder. This ensures more accountability, along with the fact passengers are always under a GPS tracking service (rider/driver at all times). The exception being when the account holder orders a ride for someone else. Passengers do not have to provide their real names and a picture at this time. A petition to require this along with other safety enhancements is trending right now with close to 6k signiatures.

Reality

It also cannot be ignored that as women we are more susceptible to becoming victims of sexual assault. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center “91% of victims of rape and sexual assault are female, and nine percent are male.” Women driving late nights, are often dealing with intoxicated male passengers, placing them in a precarious position. Alcohol consumption increases this risk (for sexual assault), according to a study done by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; “approximately one-half of all sexual assaults are committed by men who have been drinking alcohol.” Many women drivers are mothers who can only work night hours due to childcare, work, or other commitments. Driving nights is attractive for the better weekly bonuses, traffic conditions and overall earnings.  

Preparation

When you sign on to become a driver, you are prompted to watch a 20 minute Uber training video. It covers basic functions of the app, polices, procedures and briefly mentions for drivers to call 911 if ever in danger. There is a feature on Uber, and free apps like Life 360, allowing both drivers and passengers to share their trip/location with a loved one. One popular way drivers find guidance on navigating safety concerns is through Youtube, and other social media sites. Groups like Lyft/Uber Women Drivers on Facebook has over 11,000 members. Women share their experiences, safety tips, strategies and tools, as well as find support. A frequent question posted is; “what do you ladies carry for safety?” Or “how do you deal with men who hit on you?” 

Anecdotal “evidence” via Facebook groups, news stories, or online forums (Reddit, Twitter, YouTube etc.) can help you decide whether or not being a female rideshare driver is a safe. Consider the area you drive, hours of the day or night you’ll drive, and how prepared you are in the event of an attack. Do you own a dash cam, a safety plan, or plan on carrying a mace or a stun gun? Have you practiced using them?

Safety Hacks

Surveillance: Buy a dashcam! By having a dashcam, women are sending a clear message, that they are professionals, who will not tolerate any type of misconduct during a trip. Just like a thief is deterred from stealing a package from a home with surveillance, passengers are less likely to cross boundaries after seeing a blinking camera light. Dash cams are a simple safety tool, and far too many drivers, prioritize frugality, over their safety. Whenever someone shares an unpleasant encounter, they almost always mention they wish they had it on camera. Shop around, even if you end up getting something for $19.99, it is better than nothing. The most popular and recommended by rideshare drivers for safety and surveillance is Vantrue’s N2 Pro. It is a reliable, quality, dual camera. Equipped with infrared sony night vision, 1080×1920p HD loop recording, clear audio, parking mode, 256 GB of SD storage capacity (33 hours of HD recording), G-sensor and more!

Protection: Many women also carry a stun gun or mace. Getting the right kind is essential, and these are very affordable and easy to conceal. You never want to broadcast that you carry these with a passenger. While Uber allows non lethal weapons, Lyft on the other hand, does not, and you can be deactivated. Be sure to check your local state laws as well. Ultimately, do whatever you need in order to protect yourself. For mace, be sure to get a gel or foam type (v.s. the spray) that will not have the “blowback effect”, seeing as you’re in a confined space. You want to hurt the assailant, not yourself! For stun guns, there are effective flashlight combos that blend in with your cars accessories, making it easy to access in case of an emergency. Check with a tax consultant about these items being written off as operating expenses.

Preparation: Staying safe boils down to how prepared you are. Fight, flight and freeze are common responses to fearful or threatening situations. As our primal senses increase, the ability to react effectively decreases. It’s common to hear: “I wish I would have listened to my gut.” Avoid regret by remembering, if you ever, feel uncomfortable or threatened, anytime prior, during or near the end of a trip, you are allowed to end it. How? Practice keeping all your doors locked, look at your passenger before they get in. For example, don’t feel bad for declining a drunk passenger. Always trust your gut. If it feels wrong, leave. Simply hit cancel trip, and move on to the next fare. You will not be penalized on either platform for declining a trip, or passenger that makes you feel uncomfortable.

To end a trip in progress  Do. Not. Announce. It. See: Taco Bell Driver Assault video for a good illustration of why. Whenever your ending a ride in progress, make you calmly make your way to the nearest populated, safe location. Never argue with a passenger, since you are in a vulnerable position to be attacked from behind or the side, while focused on driving. You do not need to agitate or argue with someone while your defenses are down. Once you’ve pulled over, turn off the car. Grab your keys, cellphone mace/stun gun and exit the vehicle. If the passenger refuses to exit your vehicle, call the 911. Afterwards be sure  to report the incident to the critical response team. Save any dash cam footage.    

Conclusion

Is it safe for women to drive Lyft/Uber ? Yes. If women practice the safety tactics in place, they can have a very enjoyable experience driving for Lyft or Uber. Your chances are going to vary, but will likely be pleasant and enriching. Most people are happy to have a quick, inexpensive ride. 

If you’re a woman and are currently on the fence about signing up, it’s wise to be concerned about safety, however you can’t allow fear to prevent you from experiencing an opportunity that allows for flexibility, freedom, and great earning potential. Remain vigilant and knowledgeable about ways to stay safe and join a local rideshare group for tips as well as the national women’s support group.

   Lyft Sign on Bonus.                                                      Uber sign on bonus.

[lilietsblog]

when I said I was going to go do that did yall think I was joking because I wasn’t

I know almost nothing about precure (which is what the character creator is apparently based on) but IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY COOL NEW MAGICAL GIRL OCS ANYWAY

left to right, these are Hana, Kira and Nika

Hana wields the element of Darkness: dampening others’ powers, literally shutting out light (she can still see / sense things herself) and occasionally influencing / dampening people’s thoughts / emotions. Calming people down, derailing trains of thought, up to and including actual memory wipes. Her power has pretty much no offensive element, but she’s a support powerhouse and can literally handle a fight by herself by slowly winding it down to the end

Kira wields the element of Fire: literally setting things on fire, raising temperature of an area or an object, manipulating existing fires; on an emotional level, distracting people and pissing them off (specifically as a power effect, essentially drawing aggro); and finally, speeding herself up and resistance to heat which  extends to her post-transformation outfit. Her power is very strongly offensive but her only defense (other than ‘offense is the best defense’) is mobility, so she still needs others’ support to be safe in a fight.

Nika wields the element of Ice: creating ice out of thin air, lowering temperature of objects and areas, resistance to cold; on a more abstract level, she can ‘freeze herself out of reality’, which has a number of effects which she can turn up and down to a degree: - lowering the impact others’ powers have on her, while her own power remains at the same strength if a bit more difficult to control; - making herself harder to both notice and remember, ‘fading’ out of reality on perception level; - reducing the impact of physical interactions with the world, up to being able to literally pass through solid objects. Her power is versatile both offense and defense wise, but has a number of drawbacks that make it her strong preference to not fight alone.

Their powers have interactions, intuitively obvious for Nika and Kira together (manipulating temperatures of anything freely in any direction, creating water) (Kira herself cannot put out fires she starts, only move them around, and Nika cannot reduce the amount of ice she’s already created) and significantly more abstract for Hana. The intertwine of her power and Kira’s enables them to heal people, and the intertwine of her power and Nika’s enables them to mend objects - and on the other end of the spectrum, she can make both Kira’s flames and Nika’s ice more deadly/injurious/destructive, basically reducing resistances living creatures and objects have to them.

Their powers ‘wind up’ as they use them, and the longer the fight, the bigger guns they’re able to pull, often surprising themselves (and occasionally putting themselves in danger). All three of them have a connection to a ‘plane’ of their element, and can fly by forging a ‘path’ through the air that brings in some of that plane into the real world, enabling them to move through it freely. Hana uses this ability most freely, in no small part due to essential harmlessness of her element: she can practice with impunity, without worrying about either killing something with frost or setting anything on fire. Kira makes up for lack of practice with enthusiasm, counting on the interaction of her power and Nika’s to cancel out her ‘heat trail’, and Nika prefers to stay on the ground or make ice ‘platforms’ to run/jump across (their inherent connection to their plane prevents her from slipping or losing her balance)

After a bit of practice with transformation, all three of them are capable of using their powers while detransformed; however, as far as the ‘winding up’ effect goes, they start at a very, very low level of strength - transformation essentially jump starts it, along with giving them stylish looks. There’s more to it, however: the mechanism by which it does that is by making them less human and closer to an ‘elemental’ of their element, which can have a number of drawbacks,which grow as their power winds up. This is particularly noticable for Nika, who is not a fan of the effect ‘fading out’ has on her despite appreciating its utility. The most immediate and noticable effect is on their emotions. Ironically, to a degree, this is most harmless for Hana, who simply becomes more tranquil and less capable of focus as a counterbalance to her perception expanding otherwise, and she actually likes this state. Kira’s expanding connection to her element makes her more reckless, prone to tunnel vision and less empathetic; she makes sure to focus on listening to her teammates’ directions as her power grows. The effect on Nika is weaker than the other two if she doesn’t ‘fade out’ and stronger if she does, leaving her more consciously aware of it: it dissolves her attachments and strong emotions, figuratively freezing her heart. For all three of them, going too far into this state can lead to losing themselves, their identities and memories, and while detransforming restores them to a baseline human state, it’s still a traumatic experience. As their control over their power grows, they’re able to access higher levels of strength with less emotional blowback, and control the speed at which their power ‘winds up’, allowing them to possibly spend days at a time at a just-post-transformation baseline or wind up to the highest safe tier within minutes.

Their transformation trinkets take shape of friendship bracelets, which change their design with time based on their growth / emotional states. Originally they were actual friendship bracelets the three made together. They were not very close friends, but their shared affinity for magic brought them together until they made a physical embodiment of this connection, which then became a physical embodiment of their connection to magic, too.

As far as interpersonal dynamics go, Nika is kind of the ‘center’ of the team in that she’s the person both Kira and Hana are unambiguously friends with. She’s sweet, nice and non-confrontational, and cares about harmony between the three of them more than anything. Kira has aspirations of a leader, coming up with plans and pushing the group to be more proactive, while Hana acts as a check on her overflowing initiative, holding her back and serving as a voice of reason, which frequently leads to tension between the two of them. Their respect for each other grows with time, but they still occasionally have difficulty overcoming their stubborn natures and communicating properly without Nika to serve as a mediator.

(without Kira, Hana and Nika tend to sit on their hands and wait for ideas/fights/initiative to come to them, and have to deliberately and determinedly collaborate to actually come up with a proactive plan)

(without Hana, Kira pulls pliant Nika along into all kinds of explosive trouble, that they coincidentally cannot easily mend side effects of without Hana’s powers, and have to go through a lot of trouble to at least mitigate)

Their transformation does not affect their facial features and body shapes (other than giving them animal attributes) but it significantly alters both their hairstyle and manner of dressing. Kira’s style is actually most similar to her post-transformation one, as she likes wearing girly but practical clothes, with cute wide skirts with modesty shorts underneath as a staple; but her hair is cut short, without bangs, which makes her look significantly enough different to be just short of unrecognizable from a distance. Hana’s hair is usually up in elaborate ‘dos, similar to Nika’s post-transformation one, and her parents tend to dress her in overly feminine (to her taste) jewel-toned clothes that look nothing like her post-transformation outfit. Nika simply has no sense of style / fashion sense / ability to dress herself, and usually wears jeans & cartoon t-shirts with her hair in a simple braid and her bangs clipped back. For all three girls, their post-transformation outfits are essentially how they’d like to dress if neither practicality nor other people’s opinions were a concern.

Their animal attributes do have significance beyond making them even cuter, and symbolize their connection to specific presiding deities. This connection is independent of their element and is in fact specifically the thing that allows them to control it, transform back and forth and not succumb instantly to all their personality and memories dissolving in it (which is what tends to happen to people forcibly connected to an element without an additional tether like that, sometimes reversibly and sometimes not). Nika and Kira are both in the domain of the Fox, while Hana is in the domain of the Rabbit. Fox is more proactive and generally benevolent, but can get them in trouble that requires Hana, backed by her more passive and disinterested (less helpful but also less obstructive) patron, to pull them out of.

Fox is the one that manifests as their ‘mentor’ at the very beginning, although she loses interest / forgets about them / gets distracted fairly frequently, so they still have to find their own path for the most part. It actually takes a lot of time before the girls even learn that Rabbit exists, much less has any kind of connection to their team (Fox neglects to explain that, along with many other things she deems irrelevant / inconvenient / funnier if they don’t know).

Yes, Kira’s hair really IS that color. People tend to assume she dyes it (yes, she’s like 12, but it just fits really naturally as an assumption about her that she would), but actually she doesn’t, it’s just a severe case of Protagonist Syndrome (no thanks to Fox’s sense of humor). Even though she’s, uh, not the actual protagonist, that’d be Nika XD

The setting is a fictional world in which magic / deities and spirits are marginally more known about, but the girls still maintain secret identities. Part of the reason is that the very first fight ends with their opponent promising to track them down and make their lives hell; part is that they aren’t crazy about the idea of taking responsibility for all the collateral damage (sure, they eventually get the hang of minimizing and mending it, but not immediately, and there’s always still some left). Hana’s powers are definitely immediately helpful with the secret identities, yes. Nevertheless, their parents figure it out fairly fast, but as they’re literally backed/guided by deities, don’t try to stop them. Hana’s pretend nothing is happening, Kira’s just take it in stride like ‘we always knew something like this was going to happen, she’s Just Like That’, and Nika’s try their best to be supportive and helpful, even if they take their time revealing that actually yeah they do know about her big secret).

[patriotsnet]

Are There Any Republicans In The Congressional Black Caucus

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/are-there-any-republicans-in-the-congressional-black-caucus/

Are There Any Republicans In The Congressional Black Caucus

Gop Rep Byron Donalds Spokesman Says All Weve Obtained Is The Chilly Shoulder

GOP lawmaker has message for Congressional Black Caucus shutting him out

The Hill reported on Wednesday that in keeping with a spokesperson for the congressman, Rep. Byron Donalds and his employees have reached out to members of the CBC a number of instances however mentioned all weve received is the chilly shoulder.

Fields has claimed that Donalds has spoken to a number of members of the caucus as effectively, to no avail.

BuzzFeed Information reported supply says that the caucus was blocking Donalds membership.

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Donalds workplace believes hes being blocked on account of being a Republican.;;

Donalds spokesman Harrison Fields mentioned, The unhappy actuality is though the Congressman and people within the CBC share the identical race, the behind his title disqualifies him from membership as we speak.

A CBC spokesperson wouldnt deal with the Rep. Donalds concern particularly, however advised The Hill in an announcement that the group stays dedicated to preventing for points that assist Black communities, together with the police accountability invoice, defending voting rights, and a jobs invoice that helps our communities.

NEW: The Congressional Black Caucus is obstructing Rep. Byron Donalds, a Black Republican from Florida, from becoming a member of the caucus.

Hypocrisy Is The Message

I think hypocrisy is the message, Rep. Neal Dunn; told The Epoch Times. If they would just say this is the Congressional Democrat Black Caucus, I could understand that. Theyre pretending to be inclusive when they clearly are not.

Virtually everybody in America would be disappointed and anyone who honestly looks at this would have to say you are not what you say you are. Youre the Democrat Black Caucus, Dunn reiterated. I think the American people are generally fed up with hypocrisy and, if they identify this as hypocrisy, which I think would be fair, they can expect to have some blowback on this.

Theres no mystery that Washington is embroiled in a bitterly partisan divide, Dunn noted. They dont really want additional ideas. They just want their homogenous ideas.

Still, while Donalds admitted he doesnt see the political disconnect ending any time soon, he insisted the gridlock doesnt bother him.

I think people sometimes forget, our process here is supposed to be hard, Donalds explained. Things arent just supposed to be flying out of the nations capital. Its supposed to be deliberative. Its supposed to be hard. Its supposed to take a long time to pass something out of here because what we pass affects the American people. So, if this place is running like a greased machine and members are just passing everything that happens, people in their everyday lives will have to try to catch up with what were doing.

House Judiciary Committee Votes To Establish Reparations Commission

A black GOP lawmaker in the House of Representatives says the Congressional Black Caucus has declined his efforts to become a member.

In a statement to The Post on Thursday, Rep. Byron Donalds expressed his disappointment about being excluded from the CBC, which inducted other freshman lawmakers into the group six months ago.

The Congressional Black Caucus has a stated commitment to ensuring Black Americans have the opportunity to achieve the American Dream, the 42-year-old lawmaker, who represents the Naples area, began.

As a newly elected Black Member of Congress, my political party should not exempt me from a seat at the table dedicated to achieving this goal. As a young Black man who grew up in the inner city of Brooklyn in a single-parent household, my achieving of the American Dream would be a valued addition to the CBC and one that should transcend politics.

A CBC spokesperson declined to answer The Post when asked about the claim that Donalds was rebuffed by the caucus, instead saying in a statement that the group remains committed to fighting for issues that support the Black community, including the police accountability bill, protecting voting rights and a jobs bill that helps our communities.

News of the CBCs snub of Donalds was first reported Wednesday by Buzzfeed News, which cited a source familiar with the CBCs plans.

While there have been black GOP lawmakers in the caucus before, the group currently has no Republicans.

Also Check: Did Trump Say Republicans Are Stupid

Congressional Black Caucus Blocking Black House Republican From Joining Group

A Black House Republican member is allegedly being blocked from joining the Congressional Black Caucus as one of only two Black Republicans in the House.

Rep. Byron Donalds and his staff have reached out to members of the CBC multiple times, but;Donalds’s;spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement to The Hill that all we’ve got is the cold shoulder.

A source;told BuzzFeed News;that the caucus was blocking Donalds’s membership.

Donalds’s office said he believes he is being turned away from the group due to his political party.;

The sad reality is although the Congressman and those in the CBC share the same race, the behind his name disqualifies him from membership today, Fields said.;

A spokesperson for the CBC did not respond directly to the allegation that the caucus is blocking Donalds from joining but told The Hill in a statement that the group remains committed to fighting for issues that support Black communities, including the police accountability bill, protecting voting rights, and a jobs bill that helps our communities.

We will work with those who share our values and priorities for the constituents we serve, the spokesperson added.;

Donaldss office pointed to his bipartisan efforts in Congress and willingness to engage with the caucus. Fields said Donalds had joined the Black caucus in Florida when he served in the state House and that his “intention as a U.S. Congressman is the same.”

We Need More People Like Byron

Sen. Marco Rubio , who to condemn Democrat identity politics as the new Marxism, spoke highly of Donalds.

We need more people like Byron Donalds in Congress because he is interested in solving problems, Rubio told The Epoch Times. It isnt about clubs or popularity contests. It is about getting things done.

The Democrats are in complete control so if theres no conversations about public policies and what the Republican ideas are, that comes from the majority party because they choose not to have these conversations, Donalds explained. So, if thats what they chose to do, Republicans have no control over that because we dont chair any committees, we dont have the speakers office, and they also control the Senate and White House.

As much as the left tries to deride President Trump at every turn, President Trump actually engaged Democrat leadership on a lot of issues, Donalds added. Now there is no dialogue at all.

Don’t Miss: Did Trump Say Republicans Are Stupid

Congressional Black Caucus Absurdly Blames Republicans For Dallas Cop

The Congressional Black Caucus continues to show how useless it is by actually rushing out and blaming Republicans for the Dallas scumbag who was literally inspired by ;black pride groups to kill police. Amazing.

Watch below:

Democrat Rep. G.K. Butterfield blamed Republicans for the five officers who were massacred by a racially motivated gunman in Dallas Thursday night.

The Republicans in Congress are refusing to address gun violence in America that targets black men and black women and Hispanic men and Hispanic women and, yes, even police officers, Butterfield said while flanked by other members of the Congressional Black Caucus just hours after five officers were shot and killed while trying to protect protestors who were rallying against police brutality.

The suspect said he wanted to kill white people, Brown said. Especially white officers.

Despite the suspected gunmans racial motivations, which he made clear in his own words to authorities during the standoff, Butterfield insisted Republican members of Congress were responsible for the tragedy.

Butterfield also suggested more tragedies will occur in the immediate future if Republicans dont pass more gun control legislation.

If we fail to act, this will be a long, hot summer, he said.

How Many Members Are In The Black Caucus

For the 117th Congress, the CBC has a historic 56 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, representing more than 82 million Americans, 25.3 percent of the total U.S. population, and more than 17 million African-Americans, 41 percent of the total U.S. African-American population.

Read Also: Why Do Republicans Hate Planned Parenthood

Cbc: We Will Work With These Who Share Our Values

The CBC spokesperson added, We are going to work with those that share our values and priorities for the constituents we serve.

The Hill famous, Donalds workplace pointed to his bipartisan efforts in Congress and willingness to have interaction with the caucus. Fields mentioned Donalds had joined the Black Caucus in Florida when he served within the state Home and that his intention as a U.S. Congressman is identical.

The CBC at present has no GOP members however black Republicans have been a part of the group previously.;

The opposite black Republican within the Home, Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah, doesnt wish to be a part of the caucus.

Nows the time to assist and share the sources you belief.The Political Insider ranks #16 on Feedspots High 70 Conservative Political Blogs, Web sites & Influencers in 2021.

Gop Freshmen Of Color Eyeing Dem

Congressional Black Caucus shuts out GOP freshman

Its a tricky issue, with Republican lawmakers of color forced to navigate mostly untrodden territory in a historically white party.

02/13/2021 07:00 AM EST

Link Copied

Freshman Rep. Byron Donalds wants to pull off something Washington has never seen: Membership in both the liberal Congressional Black Caucus and the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Donalds a Black Tea Party Republican who represents Naples, Fla. said both groups are a natural fit for someone like himself, who believes conservative policies best improve the lives of the Black community. And he isnt afraid to defy norms in a Congress where being a lawmaker of color has historically meant belonging to the Democratic Party.

Obviously, the dominant voice in the CBC tends to be Democrat or liberal voices, and I want to bring change to that, Donalds said, noting that hes used to people gauging his political identity on his race. Shortly after arriving in Congress, Donalds recalled, a reporter asked if hed be supporting Nancy Pelosi for speaker, assuming he was a Democrat.

Yes, Im a conservative Republican, but I think in the Black community, we have a wide range of political thought, he added. It doesn’t always get talked about, but it exists.

Then theres the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which only allows Democratic members after a complicated and at times, contentious record with GOP membership, often stemming from fierce disputes over immigration policy.

Recommended Reading: Why Are Republicans Wearing Blue Ties

Ferguson Grand Jury Decision

See also: Shooting in Ferguson, Missouri

After the grand jury released the decision to not indict the officer who shot Michael Brown in a highly publicized shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, the CBC released a statement the same evening. “This decision seems to underscore an unwritten rule that Black lives hold no value; that you may kill Black men in this country without consequences or repercussions,” chair wrote.

The decision came during a time of civil unrest in the city due to the shooting.

Report: Congressional Black Caucus Blocks Black House Republican From Joining

‘The sad reality is, although the congressman and those in the CBC share the same race, the R behind his name disqualifies him from membership…’

The Congressional Black Caucus is reportedly blocking a black House Republican from joining the group, according toBuzzfeed News.

Rep. , R-Fla., and his staff have reached out to members of the CBC several times, but all weve got is the cold shoulder, according to Donaldss spokesman, Harrison Fields.;

Congressman Donalds has expressed interest in joining the CBC, but has yet to receive an official invitation, another Donalds aide said. If given, hed gladly accept.;

Donalds office said he believes he is being turned away from the CBC because he is a Republican.

…article continued below

The sad reality is, although the congressman and those in the CBC share the same race, the R behind his name disqualifies him from membership today, Fields said.

One source confirmed that the CBC is intentionally blocking his membership.

The source said the group remains committed to fighting for issues that support black communities, including the police accountability bill, protecting voting rights and a jobs bill that helps our communities when asked directly whether the accusations of discrimination were true.

We will work with those who share our values and priorities for the constituents we serve, the CBC added.

…article continued below

However, he made it clear he would not compromise his values.

Also Check: Did Trump Call Republicans Stupid In 1998

Cold Shoulder: Congressional Black Caucus Rejects Black Republican

The Congressional Black Caucus is reportedly refusing to permit a Black Republican to join the group.

BuzzFeed News reported that Rep. Byron Donalds, Florida Republican, has made several overtures about joining, but been stonewalled.

Citing a source familiar with the CBCs plans, BuzzFeed reported that the Caucus has rejected those overtures.

Congressman Donalds has expressed interest in joining the CBC, but has yet to receive an official invitation, a Donalds aide told BuzzFeed. If given, hed gladly accept.

In a separate statement to The Hill, Donalds spokesman Harrison Fields said all weve got is the cold shoulder.

A CBC spokesperson did not directly answer questions from The Hill about whether Mr. Donalds would be let in or why not.Instead, the spokesperson issued a statement touting the CBC leadership on a number of issues.

We will work with those who share our values and priorities for the constituents we serve, the spokesperson added.

BuzzFeed noted that some Democrats have publicly said they would refuse to work with any Republicans whom they see as complicit in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack, even on matters where there may be substantive agreement.

Mr. Donalds was one of the Republican lawmakers who voted not to certify president Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election, the event Congress was certifying when the rioters attacked.

The Congressional Black Caucus: Powerful Diverse And Newly Complicated

The group, which includes most Black members of Congress, remains publicly united. But in private, an influx of new members who think differently about its purpose are making a play for the future.

By Astead W. Herndon

The Congressional Black Caucus is the largest it has ever been, jumping to 57 members this year after a period of steady growth. The 50-year-old group, which includes most Black members of Congress and is entirely Democratic, is also more diverse, reflecting growing pockets of the Black electorate: millennials, progressives, suburban voters, those less tightly moored to the Democratic Party.

But while a thread of social justice connects one generation to the next, the influx of new members from varying backgrounds is testing the groups long-held traditions in ways that could alter the future of Black political power in Washington.

The newcomers, shaped by the Black Lives Matter movement rather than the civil rights era, urge Democrats to go on the offensive regarding race and policing, pushing an affirmative message about how to overhaul public safety. They seek a bolder strategy on voting rights and greater investment in the recruitment and support of Black candidates.

Perhaps more significant than any ideological or age divide, however, is the caucuss fault line of political origin stories between those who made the Democratic establishment work for them and those who had to overcome the establishment to win.

When asked, Mr. Meeks saw no conflict.

Recommended Reading: Did Republicans Cut Funding For Benghazi

The Congressional Black Caucus Is Blocking A Black Republican From Joining The Group

The Congressional Black Caucus is blocking membership to Rep. Byron Donalds, a Republican from Florida who has tried to join the organization, a source familiar with the CBCs plans told BuzzFeed News.

Its been six months since the members who won election in 2020 were inducted into the CBC, a powerful and nominally nonpartisan group of Black lawmakers in Congress. Donalds, who won election for the first time last year, has not been included in that group.

The Florida representatives office said Donalds has talked to at least three members of the CBC about joining the group, whose members are now at the forefront of police reform talks and responsible for highlighting the racial inequities around COVID-19. Hes not received an answer and the likelihood of that happening a quarter way into the 117th Congress looks bleak.

Congressman Donalds has expressed interest in joining the CBC, but has yet to receive an official invitation, said a Donalds aide. If given, hed gladly accept. The CBC did not respond to questions about the status of Donalds membership, or why he was not being let in.

The snub highlights the divide between Democrats and their Republican counterparts since Jan. 6, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol during the certification of Joe Bidens presidency.

Per Congressional Hispanic Caucus bylaws, all Democratic Members of Congress of Hispanic descent are eligible for CHC membership, according to a CHC spokesperson.

Cbc: Black Republicans Welcome

The Congressional Black Caucus says it will gladly accept the two newly elected;black Republicans into its group, opening the door to partisan diversity in a caucus that has been historically Democratic.

“Membership in the Congressional Black Caucus has never been restricted to Democrats,” CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee said in a statement to POLITICO. “Should either of the two African-American Republicans recently elected to the House of Representatives request membership in the Congressional Black Caucus, they will be welcomed.”

Lee’s statement noted that, “during the 40-year history of the Congressional Black Caucus, there have been three African-American Republican members of the House of Representatives. Two congressmen, Melvin Evans of the Virgin Islands and Gary Franks of Connecticut, decided to join the Congressional Black Caucus, however, Congressman J.C. Watts of Oklahoma did not.”

Last week, POLITICO reported that freshman-elect Allen West, who defeated Ron Klein in Florida’s 22nd District, was interested in joining the caucus. “That has been a monolithic voice in the body politic for far too long. There is a growing conservative black voice in this country,” West said.

Read Also: Republicans Leaving Congress

[sergeant-angels-trashcan]

hey look here is a star wars post with spoilers so don’t read it if you haven’t seen the movie yet

oh man ok so SO MUCH happened in this movie

there was at least two movies worth of plot here

so let’s start with the good:

the cast. freakin phenomenal. they all have great chemistry together. also, is it actually getting more diverse by the second??? who knows

space husbands being cute. also, Poe, are you the one who repaired the back of your Finn’s jacket. who did that.

members of the resistance died, and it was important. they mattered. a lot of times in movies like this, it’s easy to be like “oh yah a side character died whatever” but I think the last jedi did a good job of preventing us from doing that

creatures! lots of cool new creatures

luke. crotchety old man luke skywalker just wants you to get off his damn lawn, Rey.

Leia fucking jedi-ing herself back into the ship, I will FIGHT YOU. Force sensitive Leia. I honestly thought this was going to be The Moment we got that headcanon that’s been floating around that Leia’s force sensitivity manifests as literally no one being able to hit her when they shoot. It wasn’t, but this was pretty damn cool.

fight scenes!!! they were dope, okay. the one with Rey and Kylo??? that was awesome. And one-liner Finn putting the beatdown on Phasma “you’re scum” “yea REBEL SCUM” my HEART

yeah you know what Rey and Kylo outsmarting Snoke and then Snoke’s guards. they trusted each other for like five whole minutes!! fought back to back, it was badass. imagine what a team they would have made had not luke and kylo and snoke fucked things up

Leia Organa and her reckless flyboy son Poe Dameron. literally everything about their interactions just said “this is Leia’s actual son and heir” sometimes space mom has to get mean and punish you but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t love you (also, sidebar, I would love to hear Oscar Isaac’s take on working with Carrie Fisher in this movie since they had a lot of interactions)

Rey offering KyloBen a chance at redemption. Him rejecting it. All these characters realizing that if he doesn’t want redemption then he doesn’t get it.

Poe and Rey!!! Meeting at the very end!!! Space husband, meet space wife. Our mutual space husband may have found another space wife, so there’s that. 

Rose and Finn having the biggest kindest hearts

yoda’s sass still going strong. 

Luke astral projecting himself to the resistance so he didn’t have to actually interact with other beings and then vanishing into the ether after dealing with his problematic relation because fucking same dude

basically, if you cracked the plot apart and look at each individual story arc, there’s lot of solid, feel good stuff there.

the bad:

there was so much plot and then subplots to those plots. each plot had like, two subplots, so even if you break it down to Rey’s story and the Resistance's story...

The Resistance storyline has two miniarcs in it--Poe doing what he can on the ship, and Finn and Rose trying to find a way to sneak on to the Resistance ship

I feel kind of like Poe’s story was supposed to get us to like him, love him, hate him, and then love him again. His entire story arc is predicated on the fact that he doesn’t follow orders. If he’d just sat tight, followed orders, Finn and Rose wouldn’t have had to go do their thing...I liked their thing, but I think it was just predicated on a flimsy plot device. The reason could have been stronger. I appreciate that commander Laura Dern wasn’t incompetent, but this made Poe seem more unsympathetic to me.

honestly i just felt like there was a lot of lost potential and baiting that happened? I felt like the force-sensitive Leia thing could have been explored more--force sensitivity in general. There were at least two separate occasions where I was sure we were going to get a “use the Force, Luke” moment, one with Poe and one with Finn. I was SO READY for Force-sensitive Poe, aiming mechanism down, making the shot anyway. Finn’s moment was interrupted by Rose saving him, so that was okay.

Rey’s parents. REY’S. FUCKING. PARENTS. You know what, Kylo Ren? I don’t believe you. You are not a trustworthy source of information. I am just SO STEAMED AT THIS. There was a buildup to the reveal. This is how Snoke was going to get to Rey. This is the main thing Rey wants to know. If Rey’s parents were junkers who abandoned her, I would have liked a flashback. The fact that we didn’t, and that Kylo is the only one who tells her anything, makes me think this was kind of a cop out in case there’s blowback about it (or, if you want to be nice, that they’re saving it for later??). There were just so many moment where it seemed like we were on the cusp of finding out--Yoda talking to Luke, Luke talking about the students Kylo took with him (and wtf why didn’t we find out more about that??). Snoke talking about the heir of Darth Vader, where i was fully prepared for him to say that it was Rey. Snoke is fully capable and willing, I’m sure, to upsell Rey’s parents to try and get her to come over to his side, but he seemed to care a little much for them to be nobodies. “You were nobody, but now you can become somebody” seems more likely to be Snoke’s hard sell in that situation

And then the “you’re not here but I can talk to you/sense you/connect with you physically” device--used by Luke and Leia, Luke and Kylo, (maybe Leia and Kylo?) and Kylo and Rey. Look at those groupings. Those first two have something in common, don’t they? They’re related. This is a device that is used primarily by people who are blood relations. Could this be a coincidence, or more likely something nobody cared about? Absolutely. If it wasn’t on purpose, I’m pissed. That’s super obvious. 

And then when Kylo and Rey fought together!! Skywalkers!!! Together!! Why won’t you let me have this???

Like, okay, I get I’m very invested in rey as a skywalker. I understand the idea of having her be a nobody. That the leaders of the resistance are all nobody in particular, but will become legends in their own right.  if that is the case, though, I feel like the movie went out of its way to give us long pauses and important parallels that feel a lot like baiting. 

Going along with this, assuming Kylo Ren wasn’t lying: I could see how Kylo/Rey shippers can get a lot of fodder from this movie. I was pretty sure that was where we were heading until 1.) Poe looked at Rey with some big ol’ hearts in his eyes and 2.) we saw Luke and Leia interact in a very similar fashion as Kylo and Rey. This was one of those there-but-not devices and involved exactly the same hand touching. we got a closeup of it. we were supposed to draw parallels, I’m just not sure which ones. drawing attention to two different male-female pairs and having them physically interact in the same way but then assuming that one is supposed to be siblings and the other potentially romantic seems...weird. 

and lastly, when yoda burns down the tree, what i would have given for Ewan McGregor to be leaning against it with a classic obi-wan clapback for yoda.

i mean, okay, clearly if the answer about Rey’s parents hadn’t come almost entirely from Kylo, if there had been an actual trustworthy character confirming this, I would be screaming my love for this movie. it was busy, but good; the way Rey’s parent reveal went down just made me more aware of all the lost potential.

[bountyofbeads]

Iran Challenges Trump, Announcing End of Nuclear Restrictions https://nyti.ms/35tbDoM

Everything we once tried to pursue -- not just the JCPOA -- is backfiring. A two-state solution? Please. Iraq' stability? You have to be joking. A robust Paris Climate accord being implemented? It's in shambles, largely because we departed the scene. But we have a president threatening to destroy cultural artifacts -- an achievement worthy only of Caligula or the Nazis. A sharp and painful reminder. Everything Trump touches dies. No exceptions.

This can't continue if we are to survive as a nation.

Iran Challenges Trump, Announcing End of Nuclear Restrictions

President Trump thought the nuclear deal was flawed because restrictions on Iran would end after 15 years. Now, responding to a U.S. strike, Iran has declared the limits over after less than five.

By David E. Sanger, William J. Broad |

Published Jan. 5, 2020Updated Jan. 6, 2020, 7:45 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted January 6, 2020 |

When President Trump withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, he justified his unilateral action by saying the accord was flawed, in part because the major restrictions on Iran ended after 15 years, when Tehran would be free to produce as much nuclear fuel as it wanted.

But now, instead of buckling to American pressure, Iran declared on Sunday that those restrictions are over — a decade ahead of schedule. Mr. Trump’s gambit has effectively backfired.

Iran’s announcement essentially sounded the death knell of the 2015 nuclear agreement. And it largely re-creates conditions that led Israel and the United States to consider destroying Iran’s facilities a decade ago, again bringing them closer to the potential of open conflict with Tehran that was avoided by the accord.

Iran did stop short of abandoning the entire deal on Sunday, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and its foreign minister held open the possibility that his nation would return to its provisions in the future — if Mr. Trump reversed course and lifted the sanctions he has imposed since withdrawing from the accord.

That, at least, appeared to hold open the possibility of a diplomatic off-ramp to the major escalation in hostilities since the United States killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the second most powerful official in Iran and head of the Quds Force.

But some leading experts declared that the effort to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions through diplomacy was over. “It’s finished,” David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said in an interview. “If there’s no limitation on production, then there is no deal.”

To some of the Iran deal’s most vociferous critics, the announcement was a welcome development. Among them was John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser who was ousted by Mr. Trump last summer because, the president said, he was concerned Mr. Bolton was forcing him into conflict with Iran.

“Another good day,” Mr. Bolton wrote on Twitter. “Iran rips the mask off the idea it ever fully complied with the nuclear deal, or that it made a strategic decision to forswear nuclear weapons. Now, it’s on to the real job: effectively preventing the ayatollahs from getting such a capability.”

But to much of the world — especially the Europeans, Russians and Chinese, who were partners in the nuclear deal — Mr. Trump’s decision to back out of the accord led to the crisis.

The president’s unilateral action started a sequence of events — the re-imposition of American sanctions, Iran’s gradual return to nuclear activity over the past year, actions that led to the targeting of General Suleimani — that could be speeding the two countries toward conflict.

Iran’s announcement means that it will no longer observe any limits on the number of centrifuges it can install to enrich uranium or the level to which it enriches it.

Iran did not say if it would resume production at 20 percent, a major leap toward bomb-grade uranium, or beyond. But by allowing inspectors to remain in the country, as the foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said Tehran would, Iran will have witnesses to its own “maximum pressure” campaign against the West.

The primary American objective in the 2015 agreement was to keep Iran at least a year away from getting enough fuel to fashion a warhead.

Even before Sunday’s announcement, a series of steps by Tehran discarding elements of the agreement had reduced that warning time to a matter of months. The risk now is that uncertainties about how close the Iranians are to their first weapon will grow, and perhaps become fodder for calls in the United States and Israel to take military action.

In essence, Iran is saying it now can produce whatever kind of nuclear fuel it wants, including bomb-grade material.

Now, the United States and Israel must confront the big question: Will they take military or cyberwarfare action to try to cripple those production facilities?

More than a decade ago the United States and Israel cooperated on a mission code-named Olympic Games, the most sophisticated cyberattack in history, to get into the computer code driving the centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear enrichment site and make them blow up.

The Iranians recovered, and rebuilt the facility, tripling the number of centrifuges that existed before the cyberattack and opening a new centrifuge center deep in a mountain called Fordow, which is far harder to bomb. Israel repeatedly considered bombing the facilities, but was stopped by the United States and internal warnings about starting a war.

Now, after the killing of General Suleimani, those restraints could evaporate.

The nuclear deal also laid out unusually stringent scrutiny for all of Iran’s main nuclear facilities — “including daily access” if international atomic inspectors requested it.

Sunday’s announcement left unclear whether Tehran intends to obey that heightened scrutiny or will lower its adherence to the standard level. In a Twitter post, Mr. Zarif, the foreign minister, said “Iran’s full cooperation” with the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency “will continue.”

Mr. Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security said that reduced visibility into the Iranian nuclear program could end up increasing fears of worst-case scenarios — and, perhaps, miscalculations — related to military strikes and war.

“They were added to gain comfort,” Mr. Albright said of the strengthened inspections. “Having daily access reduced suspicions and the chance of conspiracy theories taking root.”

For example, Mr. Albright said, new ambiguity could darken views in the West on how long it would take Iran to make enough fuel for a single atomic bomb — what nuclear experts call “breakout.” Such estimates are based on the number and efficiency of the whirling machines that concentrate a rare isotope of uranium to levels high enough to make weapon fuel.

The Iran deal was designed to keep Tehran a year or more away from getting enough highly enriched uranium to fashion a single warhead — what international inspectors call “a significant quantity.”

Mr. Albright said his group’s worst-case estimate for an Iranian breakout is four to five months. But some experts, he added, have estimated as little as two months.

He noted that the international inspectors still would have regular access to Iran’s nuclear facilities as part of the safeguard agreements of nuclear nations.

But if “the high level of transparency that the nuclear deal provided” should come to an end, Mr. Albright added, “it could undermine confidence” in the West’s assessments of Iran’s nuclear acts and intentions.

*********

As a teacher, I've seen my share of "but he started it" defenses. Senator Murphy is correct that this is a nightmare scenario - a commander-in chief who wields the awesome power of the American military like a five year old - impetus, vengeful, thoughtless and without a larger strategy. Except it is clear that the "he" who started it here is Trump himself by backing out of the Iranian nuclear deal. It's hard to not see Trump's pardon of Edward Gallagher for war crimes as a sign of total disregard for any restraint against war crimes. And paving the way for Trump himself to order them in the form of attacks against cultural sites. I hope that Trump has not seeded the military top command with enough "yes" players to prevent at least one person from refusing to commit an immoral order... from the president.

For Trump, the Burden May Be Proving This Is Not the Moment His Critics Predicted

The president and his allies dismiss the criticism about his Iran actions as partisan blowback from political adversaries too timid to take strong action against foreign enemies.

By Peter Baker | Published Jan. 5, 2020 Updated Jan. 6, 2020, 5:53 AM ET | New York Times | Posted January 6, 2020 |

WASHINGTON — For three years, President Trump’s critics have expressed concern over how he would handle a genuine international crisis, warning that a commander in chief known for impulsive action might overreach with dangerous consequences.

In the angry and frenzied aftermath of the American drone strike that killed Iran’s top general, with vows of revenge hanging in the air, Mr. Trump confronts a decisive moment that will test whether those critics were right or whether they misjudged him.

“The moment we all feared is likely upon us,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and vocal critic of Mr. Trump, wrote on Twitter over the weekend. “An unstable President in way over his head, panicking, with all his experienced advisers having quit, and only the sycophantic amateurs remaining. Assassinating foreign leaders, announcing plans to bomb civilians. A nightmare.”

Mr. Trump’s advisers and allies dismissed the criticism as the predictable partisan blowback from political adversaries too timid to take strong action against foreign enemies who have targeted Americans for years with impunity. And some of Mr. Trump’s senior lieutenants were betting that any Iranian response proves less than meets the eye.

“It may be that there’s a little noise here in the interim, that the Iranians make the choice to respond,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” as he made the rounds of all five major television news talk shows. “I hope that they don’t. President Trump has made clear what we will do in response if they do, that our response will be decisive and vigorous.”

But the ripple effects from the drone strike in Baghdad that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the visiting commander of Iran’s elite security and intelligence forces, were playing out in rapid succession on Sunday. Iraq’s Parliament voted to expel American forces from the country for violating its sovereignty. Iran declared that it was abandoning some constraints on its nuclear program. And the American military halted operations against the Islamic State to focus on protecting itself from Iranian retaliation.

The result is a situation as volatile as it has been at any point in many years, one that will challenge an instinctive, combative and relatively inexperienced commander in chief to navigate his way through a perilous period without making the kind of mistake he has accused his predecessors of making. And he faces enormous skepticism from the critics who have long warned that he was too erratic to face moments of crisis.

The massive demonstrations and calls for retaliation in the region ultimately may not add up to more than “a little noise,” as Mr. Pompeo asserted. The Iraqi parliamentary vote to force American troops to leave was nonbinding and the caretaker government may not follow through if only to preserve a hedge against Iranian dominance. Even as Tehran vowed to move ahead with its nuclear program, it kept its options open by not expelling international inspectors.

And some experts on the region suggested that Mr. Trump’s very unpredictability was a deterrent in itself, arguing that the killing of General Suleimani may have been so brazen and shocking to Iranian leaders that they will be wary of provoking an American president evidently willing to escalate in ways his predecessors were not.

“Trump actually has a very strong hand vis-à-vis the clerical regime,” said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former C.I.A. specialist on Iran at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an organization that has rallied opposition to Iran’s government. “Whether he chooses to play it, I don’t know. He’s not a strategist. But his tactical game hasn’t been bad. The hit on Suleimani was genius — totally flummoxed his opponent.”

But these are high-risk gambles with much at stake.

For the moment, the United States faces a dramatic break with Iraq, a country it has deeply invested in for nearly 17 years, and hard-liners in Tehran have consolidated their domestic position by capitalizing on anger at America. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, may not immediately mount a response, but it is widely assumed that he will act at some point, whether through violence or cyber means.

“When that response occurs, and depending on what it is, the ball will be squarely back in Trump’s court, presenting him with an equally fateful decision,” said Robert Malley, the president of the International Crisis Group and a former Middle East adviser to President Barack Obama. “Does he escalate further, as he has warned, and risk a far longer, bloodier and costlier military confrontation? Or does he seek an off ramp?”

Mr. Trump has said he took out General Suleimani, whose forces have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American troops over the years, not to start a war but to stop one; his advisers asserted, without providing evidence, that the Iranian commander was plotting an “imminent” attack. At the same time, the president has ratcheted up his talk of war, vowing to respond to any Iranian provocations with overwhelming force, including strikes at Iranian cultural sites that some experts said would amount to a war crime.

He did not retreat from that on Sunday. “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site?” he told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One as he returned to Washington after his holidays in Florida. “It doesn’t work that way.”

Warming to the conflict, he even said he was ready to escalate against Iraq, the country America has worked so hard to stand up as a key ally in the region, threatening “very big sanctions” if it expels American troops.

“We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it,” he said of an air base in Iraq. “If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.”

A longer, bloodier and costlier military confrontation in the Middle East is not what Mr. Trump forecast when he won the presidency in 2016 nor what he seemed to offer since taking office. Throughout the campaign, he promised to extricate the United States from a geopolitical viper’s nest that has cost so many lives and so much treasure and as late as Sunday, he repeated his conclusion that “going into the Middle East was the worst decision ever made in the history of our country.”

But many of his policy pronouncements on the campaign trail and since were vague and at times contradictory, allowing different voters to hear what they wanted.

As a candidate, he repeatedly called for an end to Middle East engagements, while also saying at other times that he might need as many as 30,000 troops in the region to defeat the Islamic State. He excoriated President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq while declaring himself a fan of that administration’s interrogation techniques, at one point declaring, “Torture works.”

Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who previously served in the State and Defense Departments and on the National Security Council staff, said Mr. Trump’s decision to kill General Suleimani represented “a partial evolution” for a president who denounced “endless wars.”

Where Mr. Trump may once have seen a clash with Iran as an opportunity to negotiate a better nuclear agreement than Mr. Obama did, he now sees an inextricable connection to Tehran’s malign actions in the region, fomenting wars and supporting terrorists, Mr. Doran said.

“But he is also more keenly aware of the power differential between us and the Iranians,” Mr. Doran said. “Once he realized that Khamenei thought Suleimani gave him a competitive advantage, Trump simply took Suleimani off the board. With a drone, not an invasion force.”

In scrambling the equation, Mr. Trump took the initiative, not as Mr. Bush or Mr. Obama did in their own very different ways, but in classic Trumpian fashion, keeping everyone off balance, projecting toughness and gambling that he will be able to handle whatever comes next.

______

Below are some readers thoughts on the above article. I would love to hear your thoughts:

" 'The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.' George Orwell 1984 The latest from Pompeo being that we're in a safer world now." CLAYTON MARLOW, NH

"We are witnessing groupthink play out in this situation. We have Donald, impulsive, reckless, lacking in geopolitical knowledge, disdaining expertise, easily manipulated, and above all, wanting to prove himself. Pompeo has been orchestrating this for months according to the Washington Post. His pliable classmate Esper is his foil for this. They have bypassed the usual processes, gutting the administration of all the Iran experts, driving toward an end. No one is willing to speak out: we have worried officials off the record and radio silence from the Vichy GOP elected officials. Who was the American contractor killed on December 27? We’ve upended the Middle East in retaliation and yet I have read nothing about this person. Given the propensity of this administration to lie, it makes me wonder what happened to precipitate this. The story is not holding up very well."

NJLATEMOM, NJ REGION

"I’d like to know where Trump was the morning of 9/11. I was at work on W. 73rd St. I was in the blood donor lines for victims whose body parts couldn’t even be identified. I met my traumatized kids, who saw the second plane crash into a building I used to work at, and who walked from Minetta St to 103rd with a toxic cloud following them. Donald Trump, this time our blood will be on your hands."

REV. ROS, GERMANY

"George W Bush went into Iraq under false pretenses and destabilized Iraq and the Middle-East. Many American and allied lives were lost. Now Iraq wants us out of the country and Trump threatens sanctions. How is his foreign policy better than Obama's? How has Trump made the world a safer place? Trump has given Iran and all other anti-American terrorists another reason to hate Americans. These terrorist do not live in just the moment. They will wait for a time when our guard is down to strike. Trump says he doesn't trust the FBI or our intelligence community yet he says that reports from these groups necessitated the strike against Suleimani. We need a stable long range thinking president. I only hope we can make it to November without a major loss of American lives."VMG, NC

"Giving a child matches without supervision is, quite simply, insane. Somehow, the idea of putting that child in the White House, with all its dangerous buttons, seems perfectly acceptable to too many low-information voters. God help us."

DAVID, AUSTIN TX

"The power of the presidency is simply too much for someone with the intellect and disposition of a sixth grade boy. "trump's" chest thumping and name calling has been embarrassing for the U.S. but now there might be serious consequences for the world. Our fellow citizens, the republican portion of the electorate, have failed the country. Rather than trying to correct their error, I am afraid they will indulge in blame placing and continue to mindlessly chant, on cue, in support of our national buffoon."DROID05680, VT

"What we are seeing in Donald J. Trump’s bellicose words and actions is a measure of the man under the pressure of impeachment. “Abuse of power“ and “Obstruction of congress” are being played out in what is likely to lead to war against Iran. Instead of recognizing the consequences of his impulsive decision to assassinate the second most significant individual in Iran, our president is fanning the flames with ever more incendiary threats. And he is doing it without any input or oversight by Congress. This is worse than any of us could have imagined."PATRICIA,

DETROIT

"I'm sorry but Reuel Marc Gerecht is wrong. Our hand is not strong unless you are focusing only on tactics. We are not. Trump didn't gain the initiative in killing Suleimani. He lost the initiative. He gave it away. Trump effectively declared war on Iran with a sucker punch. He did so without explanation or authorization. Now we have to wait and see how Iran decides to respond. There is absolutely no strategy or road map for US retaliation beyond that point. Bombing cultural sites is not an operational military strategy designed to defeat an enemy. We are flying blind."

ANDY, SALT LAKE CITY, UT

"Trump is gambling, not legally in casinos but dangerously in the maelstrom which is the Middle East!Years ago he lost the gamble of casinos in Atlantic City and had to declare bankruptcy.He is losing his very big gamble that he can dictate and threaten to change the destinies of other nations.He is not strategic -he is impulsive.This time he is gambling in a world where nuclear weapons are the jackpot.He needs to be stopped before he makes more and costly mistakes.His foreign policy is bankrupt-time for the courts or impeachment to end these risky bets."JANET, SILVER SPRINGS FL

"In recent television coverage of Trump's assassination of the Iranian general we are shown videos from the 70s of American hostages blind folded with hands tied standing in front of the US Embassy in Tehran. Unfortunately, there is no historical context offered as to how years earlier the US unseated an Iranian leader and installed our own puppet regime to rule Iran. To add insult to Trump's mishandling of Iran, he now has doubled down with Iraq even asking for restitution should our military forces be asked to leave. Imagine the hubris. We invaded a sovereign country, Iraq, based on bogus intel that resulted in displacing a million Iraqis, while killing of maiming a large number of their population. Now Trump want's to be compensated for our efforts. Dear Lord!" D. SMITH, SC

[theinvinciblenoob]

Google has responded to blowback about a privacy hostile change it made this week, which removes user agency by automating Chrome browser sign-ins, by rowing back slightly — saying it will give users the ability to disable this linking of web-based sign-in with browser-based sign-in in a forthcoming update (Chrome 70), due mid next month.

The update to Chrome 69 means users are automatically logged into the browser when they are signed into another Google service, giving them no option to keep these digital identities separate.

Now Google is saying there will be an option to prevent it pinning your Chrome browsing to your Google account — but you’ll have to wait about a month to get it.

And of course for the millions of web users who never touch default settings being automatically signed into Google’s browser when they are using another Google service like Gmail or YouTube will be the new normal.

Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins, flagged the change in a critical blog post at the weekend — entitled Why I’m done with Chrome — arguing that the new “forced login” feature blurs the previously strong barrier between “never logged in” and “signed in”, and thus erodes user trust.

Prior to the Chrome 69 update, users had to actively opt in to linking their web-based and browser-based IDs. But Google’s change flips that switch — making the default setting hostile to privacy by folding a Chrome user’s browsing activity into their Google identity.

In its blog post Google claims that being signed in to Chrome does not mean Chrome sync gets turned on.

So it’s basically saying that despite it auto-linking your Chrome browsing and (Google) web-based activity it’s not automatically copying your browsing data to its own servers, where it would then be able to derive all sorts of fresh linked intel about you for its ad-targeting purposes.

“Users who want data like their browsing history, passwords, and bookmarks available on other devices must take additional action, such as turning on sync,” writes Chrome product manager Zach Koch.

But in his blog post, Green is also highly critical of Google’s UI around Chrome sync — dubbing it a dark pattern, and pointing out that it’s now all too easy for a user to accidentally send Google a massive personal data dump — because, in a fell swoop, the company “has transformed the question of consenting to data upload from something affirmative that I actually had to put effort into — entering my Google credentials and signing into Chrome — into something I can now do with a single accidental click”.

“The fact of the matter is that I’d never even heard of Chrome’s “sync” option — for the simple reason that up until September 2018, I had never logged into Chrome. Now I’m forced to learn these new terms, and hope that the Chrome team keeps promises to keep all of my data local as the barriers between “signed in” and “not signed in” are gradually eroded away,” Green also wrote.

Hence his decision to dump Chrome. (Other browsers are certainly available, though Chrome accounts for by far the biggest chunk of global browser usage.)

Responding to what Koch colorlessly terms “feedback” about the controversial changes, he says Google is going to “better communicate our changes”.

“We’re updating our UIs to better communicate a user’s sync state,” he writes. “We want to be clearer about your sign-in state and whether or not you’re syncing data to your Google Account.”

His explanation for Google flipping the default to be privacy hostile (rather than user affirmative) is to claim that “we think sign-in consistency will help many of our users”, saying Google has “received feedback from users on shared devices that they were confused about Chrome’s sign-in state”.

“We think these UI changes help prevent users from inadvertently performing searches or navigating to websites that could be saved to a different user’s synced account,” he also writes.

Though, as Green points out, making more people sign in to Chrome (rather than fewer) is a fuzzy sort of fix for an account ‘pollution’ issue.

Chrome’s flipped switch also now means users have to take Google’s word for it that it won’t suddenly auto sync their data to its own servers — say by making another opaque change, in the future, to further automate the harvesting of users’ personal data.

Privacy policies that can just be unilaterally rewritten at any point, without obtaining fresh consent from the user, aren’t worth the pixels they’re claiming to be inked in.

Let’s also not forget this is the same company that, back in 2012, combined around 60 separate privacy policies into a single overarching policy and Google account covering multiple, distinct web products — thereby, also in a fell swoop, collapsing multiple user identities which, prior to then, people had been able to maintain (to try to control what Google knew about them).

Google’s push where privacy is concerned is pretty clearly one way — away from individual agency and control, and towards it being able to join up ever more personal data dots which its ad-targeting business can use.

With the Chrome update the company has rubbed out yet another privacy firewall for users wanting to fight its amassing of conglomerate profiles of their online activity.

And even with the after-the-fact switch that’s being announced now (and only after a critical backlash), which from next month will let settings pros disable the default Chrome auto-link, the company’s general direction of travel does not respect user agency at all. Quite the opposite.

Google seems to be trying to make consent itself an after thought — i.e. for the few who know to poke around in the settings. Instead of what it should be: An affirmative, baked in by design to ensure privacy is available for everyone.

Google’s push to erode privacy looks likely to bring it problems in Europe, where a tough new regional data protection framework makes privacy by design and default mandatory.

Failure to comply with this element of the GDPR can attract fines as large as 2% of a company’s global annual turnover — which would not be a trivial sum for a company as revenue-heavy as Alphabet.

And, as others have pointed out, Google making a major change to how Chrome handles sign-ins does not look like business as usual for the product. So the company would have been well advised to have carried out a privacy impact assessment — to ensure the changes it’s making were compliant with GDPR.

We’ve asked Google whether it carried out a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) ahead of pushing out the change to sign-ins on Chrome 69 and will update this report with any response. Or whether it’s handling sign-ins differently in the EU (which does not seem to be the case).

We’ve also asked if it will commit to making any DPIA for Chrome public.

A spokesman acknowledged receipt of our questions but at the time of writing the company had not sent any answers.

There’s another potentially problematic issue for Google here too, vis-a-vis GDPR, because according to Koch’s blog post it is not currently clearing Google auth cookies when cookies are cleared by the user.

He writes that it will “change this behavior that so all cookies are deleted and you will be signed out”. But that’s going to take about a month.

In the meanwhile a user action (clearing cookies) is not resulting in Google clearing all cookies — which looks like a pretty clear violation of privacy rules, albeit temporarily (if it’s going to fix it next month).

We also asked Google about its failure to clear all cookies.

Safe to say, Google’s privacy hostile actions look sure to attract close scrutiny in the EU where privacy is a fundamental right.

But the company is also set to face questions on the topic in a Senate committee hearing today — and is expected to acknowledge that it has made “mistakes” on privacy issues, according to documents seen by Reuters. 

Though it will also apparently claim it has “learned, and improved our robust privacy program”.

Certain Chrome users would probably take a very different view.

via TechCrunch

[fmservers]

Google to give Chrome users an opt-out to ‘forced login’ after privacy backlash

Google has responded to blowback about a privacy hostile change it made this week, which removes user agency by automating Chrome browser sign-ins, by rowing back slightly — saying it will give users the ability to disable this linking of web-based sign-in with browser-based sign-in in a forthcoming update (Chrome 70), due mid next month.

The update to Chrome 69 means users are automatically logged into the browser when they are signed into another Google service, giving them no option to keep these digital identities separate.

Now Google is saying there will be an option to prevent it pinning your Chrome browsing to your Google account — but you’ll have to wait about a month to get it.

And of course for the millions of web users who never touch default settings being automatically signed into Google’s browser when they are using another Google service like Gmail or YouTube will be the new normal.

Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins, flagged the change in a critical blog post at the weekend — entitled Why I’m done with Chrome — arguing that the new “forced login” feature blurs the previously strong barrier between “never logged in” and “signed in”, and thus erodes user trust.

Prior to the Chrome 69 update, users had to actively opt in to linking their web-based and browser-based IDs. But Google’s change flips that switch — making the default setting hostile to privacy by folding a Chrome user’s browsing activity into their Google identity.

In its blog post Google claims that being signed in to Chrome does not mean Chrome sync gets turned on.

So it’s basically saying that despite it auto-linking your Chrome browsing and (Google) web-based activity it’s not automatically copying your browsing data to its own servers, where it would then be able to derive all sorts of fresh linked intel about you for its ad-targeting purposes.

“Users who want data like their browsing history, passwords, and bookmarks available on other devices must take additional action, such as turning on sync,” writes Chrome product manager Zach Koch.

But in his blog post, Green is also highly critical of Google’s UI around Chrome sync — dubbing it a dark pattern, and pointing out that it’s now all too easy for a user to accidentally send Google a massive personal data dump — because, in a fell swoop, the company “has transformed the question of consenting to data upload from something affirmative that I actually had to put effort into — entering my Google credentials and signing into Chrome — into something I can now do with a single accidental click”.

“The fact of the matter is that I’d never even heard of Chrome’s “sync” option — for the simple reason that up until September 2018, I had never logged into Chrome. Now I’m forced to learn these new terms, and hope that the Chrome team keeps promises to keep all of my data local as the barriers between “signed in” and “not signed in” are gradually eroded away,” Green also wrote.

Hence his decision to dump Chrome. (Other browsers are certainly available, though Chrome accounts for by far the biggest chunk of global browser usage.)

Responding to what Koch colorlessly terms “feedback” about the controversial changes, he says Google is going to “better communicate our changes”.

“We’re updating our UIs to better communicate a user’s sync state,” he writes. “We want to be clearer about your sign-in state and whether or not you’re syncing data to your Google Account.”

His explanation for Google flipping the default to be privacy hostile (rather than user affirmative) is to claim that “we think sign-in consistency will help many of our users”, saying Google has “received feedback from users on shared devices that they were confused about Chrome’s sign-in state”.

“We think these UI changes help prevent users from inadvertently performing searches or navigating to websites that could be saved to a different user’s synced account,” he also writes.

Though, as Green points out, making more people sign in to Chrome (rather than fewer) is a fuzzy sort of fix for an account ‘pollution’ issue.

Chrome’s flipped switch also now means users have to take Google’s word for it that it won’t suddenly auto sync their data to its own servers — say by making another opaque change, in the future, to further automate the harvesting of users’ personal data.

Privacy policies that can just be unilaterally rewritten at any point, without obtaining fresh consent from the user, aren’t worth the pixels they’re claiming to be inked in.

Let’s also not forget this is the same company that, back in 2012, combined around 60 separate privacy policies into a single overarching policy and Google account covering multiple, distinct web products — thereby, also in a fell swoop, collapsing multiple user identities which, prior to then, people had been able to maintain (to try to control what Google knew about them).

Google’s push where privacy is concerned is pretty clearly one way — away from individual agency and control, and towards it being able to join up ever more personal data dots which its ad-targeting business can use.

With the Chrome update the company has rubbed out yet another privacy firewall for users wanting to fight its amassing of conglomerate profiles of their online activity.

And even with the after-the-fact switch that’s being announced now (and only after a critical backlash), which from next month will let settings pros disable the default Chrome auto-link, the company’s general direction of travel does not respect user agency at all. Quite the opposite.

Google seems to be trying to make consent itself an after thought — i.e. for the few who know to poke around in the settings. Instead of what it should be: An affirmative baked in by design to ensure privacy is available for everyone.

Its push to erode privacy therefore looks likely to bring it problems in Europe, where a tough new regional data protection framework makes privacy by design and default mandatory.

Failure to comply with this element of the GDPR can attract fines as large as 2% of a company’s global annual turnover — which would not be a trivial sum for a company as revenue-heavy as Alphabet.

As others have pointed out, Google making a major change to how Chrome handles sign-ins does not look like business as usual for the product. So it looks like the company should have carried out a privacy impact assessment — to ensure the changes it’s making are compliant with GDPR.

We’ve asked Google whether it carried out a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) ahead of pushing out the change to sign-ins on Chrome 69 and will update this report with any response. Or whether it’s handling sign-ins differently in the EU (which does not seem to be the case).

We’ve also asked if it will commit to making any DPIA for Chrome public.

A spokesman acknowledged receipt of our questions but at the time of writing the company had not sent any answers.

There’s another potentially problematic issue for Google here too, vis-a-vis GDPR, because according to Koch’s blog post it is not currently clearing Google auth cookies when cookies are cleared by the user.

He writes that it will “change this behavior that so all cookies are deleted and you will be signed out”. But that’s going to take about a month.

In the meanwhile a user action (clearing cookies) is not resulting in Google clearing all cookies — which looks like a pretty clear violation of privacy rules, albeit temporarily (if it’s going to fix it next month).

We also asked Google about its failure to clear all cookies.

Safe to say, Google’s privacy hostile actions look sure to attract close scrutiny in the EU where privacy is a fundamental right.

But the company is also set to face questions on the topic in a Senate committee hearing today — and is expected to acknowledge that it has made “mistakes” on privacy issues, according to documents seen by Reuters. 

Though it will also apparently claim it has “learned, and improved our robust privacy program”.

Via Natasha Lomas https://techcrunch.com

[eichy815]

The Luck Starts Here...

Every year, fun-loving American citizens anticipate the frivolity and debauchery of St. Patrick’s Day.  For people with Irish heritage, it’s an opportunity to display ethnic pride.  For many others, it’s an excuse to watch parades and get drunk.

And then there are those such as myself – those of us who have rarely (if ever) partaken in St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.  Either we don’t possess Irish nationality as part of our genetic lineage (guilty!) or we have other priorities in our lives that don’t involve the garish festivities (also guilty!).

It’s only with the escalating socio-political chaos of our world that I’ve begun to reflect a little more about the concept that is most frequently associated with March 17:  LUCK.

Do we create our own luck, or is it all truly based on random chance?  Do most things in life happen as fluke occurrences...or do chains-of-events get set off that end up having greater ripple effects?  Or, is there truly supernatural/divine intervention in our lives that we have no real way of confirming or disproving?

One “self-stigma” that I’ve spawned for myself, over the years, is a self-perception that I am a human “bad luck charm.”  Worst-case scenarios tend to play out exactly as I fear they will – and I often seem to be an involuntary magnet for many different freaky, unstable, overbearing individuals.  It has been this way since my childhood.

The logical part of my brain realizes that this is merely negative thinking...and that I have more control over my life and my future than I’m usually willing to acknowledge.  Still, I find myself coming back to that fairweather adage of “We make our own luck...” and then reflecting:

“Well, great!  So *how* do I finally generate some good luck for myself???”

My quest for solutions might be off-base, but I’m going to begin giving it my best attempt.

So, the first thing I did was make a list of all of the MAJOR goals and results that I want to see come to pass – both in the short-term and in the long-term.

If we look at actual Irish traditions, there are some common threads.  Associating the color green with good luck and leprechauns just didn’t appear out of thin air.  Hues of green (particularly the shamrock) can be traced back to Catholicism.  Three-leaf clovers are a symbol of the Holy Trinity, and the rise of springtime can be linked to the greenish shades that first appear as plants reblossom following winter hibernation.

Saint Patrick himself had linked religious teachings to the rebirth of spring as well as new opportunities that can arise amidst the season itself.  In other words...what some people choose to perceive as “luck.”

According to historian Timothy McMahon, green began to arise as a nationalistic color for the Irish as they sought independence from Britain during the Great Irish Rebellion of 1641.  This came into play when the Catholics sought independence from Protestant rule...and, again, toward the beginning of the Nineteenth Century when newer freedom fighters desired more of a nonsectarian government.  The latter factor ended up becoming one of several dynamics which prompted mass immigration from Ireland to North America.

Even the clover itself goes back farther than the political unrest of post-medieval Ireland.  Celtic tribes believed that the oddity of a four-leaf clover would provide magical protection from evil spirits – repelling them with a combination of faith, love, and hope.  The pot-of-gold has symbolized eventual wealth and fortune...a bit of a folkloric allegory for how strength and perseverance can ultimately pay off for the sojourner.

Part of the irony here is also how Saint Patrick has been documented as a former slave who eventually attained his freedom and then succeeded in (ironically) converting the Druids to Christianity.  The mythical connection of four-leaf clovers to attract fairies to bring them good fortune became more palatable as the Irish people continued to fight for political revolution.

If you think about it, there are parallels that can be drawn to the modern day.  Most Americans are politically-agitated...at one point or another along the ideological spectrum.  Whether someone translates that into proactive behavior is obviously contingent upon one’s individual life circumstances.

When I first began to ponder the concept of “making my own luck,” I started off that mental exercise by creating a list of the biggest desires I have in life...both for myself and for the rest of the world.  I will mainly speak in generalities, here, so that it’s easier for anyone who wants to apply this to their own life.  That way, they can relate to my efforts without being simultaneously biased by my own specific desires.

First, many of us tend to want specific individuals (or, more broadly speaking, certain TYPES of people) to get successfully elected to office to enact positive changes.  So I began to mull over what little things I can do to promote those candidates while educating others about their virtues.  Then, you scale that up (as much as possible, within the context of your own life) – whether it’s working on a campaign for them directly, or “going rogue” and influencing outside groups to promote a message that will ultimately benefit your given candidate...every action you take to get the word out can have a ripple effect.

Like a stone being dropped in a pond...creating an outward reverberation of ripples in the water.   Or firing off a plethora of bullets from a gun...whereas those bullets are, instead, chunks of clarity and inspiration (rather than lethal tools for destruction).  How many of those individual bullets actually make contact with their intended target will be unknown until you actually fire the bullets.  But you won’t make contact unless you pull the trigger.  

So when you really believe in a candidate and view it as pivotal that they get elected (or reelected, as the case may be) – hammer away on their top endeavors that will make life positive for us.  And highlight the most glaring deficiencies embodied by their opponents. Lather, Rinse, repeat.

Next, too often so many of us tend to forget the art of conciliation.  When you have multiple voices who share a common basic goal – but have drastically different viewpoints on who is to blame, or what a solution should be – we have to find a cohesive way to bring those voices together.

Speaking in generalities, this can be accomplished if we ask all parties involved to identify tangible goals.  Then, outline what are the most likely paths that could be taken to achieve those goals; this will help the group, as a whole, determine which plan-of-action is going to be simultaneously the most realistic and the most effective.

A third area about which I often find myself stressing is our society’s collective stability when it comes to health, finances, and economics.  This is clearly a very complex problem with no instantaneous solution.  So, with that in mind, the best route here would be to imagine the worst-case scenarios that could befall our society.  Then “work backwards” and construct which preventative measures should reduce the chances of any worst-case scenarios from coming to pass.

On a macroscopic level, this should be the mechanism by which our politicians would construct public policy.  For those of us who aren’t actually elected lawmakers:  we can always do a better job of articulating those policy proposals to those who ARE in power.  Not to mention disseminating those ideas for the masses.

It can also be implemented on a smaller scale, more microscopically.  The aforementioned principle can be scaled down to apply to private organizations or the inner workings of social cohorts.  Context will always determine in which manner it’s modified.

The final ingredient in this general “recipe for luck-creation” would be maximizing one’s exposure so you can disseminate your message to as much of a mass audience as is realistic.  In some cases, your target audience might be very finite and self-contained.  In other cases, you may have reservations about “going public” because you fear ramifications or blowback at your workplace.  If those are indeed factors, you’ll need to adjust your approach accordingly.

Seek out as many like-minded people as possible...but don’t be hesitant about respectfully disagreeing on finer points of detail.  Restate your common goals and similar values.  Describe the ideal endgame.  Acknowledge everybody’s stake in achieving an optimal result.

As for those of us who haven’t yet found “true love”...that’s an even more complex journey.  It could also become an entirely separate topic that warrants a totally different discussion to be saved for another day.

I don’t necessarily believe that things in life happen due to “flukes” or “random chance.”  I think there are forces beyond our mortal comprehension that contribute to influencing the way life plays out.  And I don’t claim to ever hope to fully understand any of it before my mortal life concludes.

But my faith holds that always striving to take these sorts of steps will maximize the odds of an outcome becoming more positive than negative.  If we choose to define those outcomes as “luck,” then that’s in the eye of the beholder.

Do I literally believe that leprechauns and magical gold coins exist in our world?  Not in the literal, caricature-based way that pop culture has appropriated them.  Celtic mythology could indeed be based on greater supernatural and paranormal truths...but let’s not harbor any delusions about unlocking those mysteries during our lifetimes.

So where does that leave us?  “Luck,” such that it is, can be changed and influenced based on the actions we take in the present.  We won’t always know where that path will ultimately lead...but we still do the best we can with the information to which we have access.

That should be enough to make the leprechauns proud.

[igotthatfireapp-blog]

Make 2018 Your Best Year With 12 New BBQ Products

Did you know that one of the best barbecue stores on the planet resides quietly on my website, barbecuebible.com? It’s true. For several years, my staff and I have vetted the many hundreds of products that come our way and placed the worthy ones on our virtual shelves. You’ll find everything from the latest barbecue accessories (including grills and smokers) to hard-to-find provisions and specialty foods: the Alaskan spruce salt that’s incredible on beef; Vermont Maple Sriracha Hot Sauce; authentic bomba rice for grilled paella; and much, much more. To celebrate the new year and its possibilities, I rounded up a dozen new items that will help you polish your grill game in 2018.

Powersmith Ash Vacuum: Ash build-up in the firebox can cause problems for pitmasters who cook with charcoal and wood, and especially for those who use pellet grills. The fine ash pellets produce can smother the fire, requiring a mid-cook clean-up and restart. A good vacuum is essential. This one is constructed primarily of metal, making it ideal for suctioning ash from pellet grills, charcoal- and wood-burning grills and smokers, and even fireplaces. A two-part filter system keeps everything in the 3-gallon canister and prevents blowback. Can I get the door for you? You know that moment when you realize your hands are too full of food platters or grilling equipment to open the sliding glass door between the house and the patio? (Me, too.) Enter the Smart-Slider, an ingenious device that enables you to open the door with your foot. Unobtrusive, and incredibly handy. Wish I’d thought of it first.

Behold, the power of the kettle grill: The Slow ’N Sear turns your kettle grill into a smoker and a blistering hot sear machine—all in one. The patent-pending design provides a true 2-zone environment within your kettle. Its built-in water reservoir separates your charcoal and wood from the cooking zone. This creates both a thermal barrier that keeps temperatures stable across the entire cooking surface as well as a humidity source to help deliver the best texture to your food right from the start of the cook. Flavor to spare: Featuring six electrifying flavors, my latest collection of rubs will take anyone’s grilling and smoking to the next level. Novices and pit masters alike will appreciate Malabar Steak Rub, Greek Island Herb Rub, Fennel Pepper Rub, Kansas City Smoke, Carolina Pit Powder, and Santa Fe Coffee. Game-changers, all.

Fire, faster: The FiAir Point-and-Shoot Portable Blower is the first and only truly portable powered blower for wood and charcoal fires. No need to give up charcoal flavor for gas grill speed, FiAir brings coals to searing temperatures in just 8-12 minutes and brings greater control to charcoal grilling and smoking. Wood starts even faster: 2 minutes or less. Compact size and light weight make it easy to go wherever you need fire. Runs on three AAA batteries (not included). Take smoking to the next level: Fill the canister of this device with wood chips, and the cleverly-named Smoke Daddy Magnum P-I-G will give you up to 5 hours of adjustable cold smoke. Use it to augment the smoke flavor in your favorite barbecued foods, or cold smoke salmon, trout, cheese, or other delicate proteins. The P-I-G can even be used in conjunction with home-built smokers. The best of both worlds: Leave it to grilling pioneer Weber to bridge the gap between idiosyncratic natural lump charcoal and more predictable briquettes. Introducing Weber’s 17950 Natural Hardwood Briquettes. Made of 100 percent natural hardwoods, a chimney full of these babies will furnish consistent heat for up to 3 hours. Try a bag, and let me know what you think.

Expand your grilling horizons: The Spanish call it la plancha. Argentinians call it la champa. We call it the best way there is to cook Spanish-style seafood and veggies over a wood, charcoal, or even gas fire. The Steven Raichlen Best of Barbecue cast iron plancha gives foods a crusty, smoky sear while keeping them succulent on the inside. The plancha is excellent for delicate fish, shrimp, vegetables—anything that tends to break apart, fall through the rungs on the grill grate, or dry out on the grill. Raised side handles for easy moving on and off the grill. Trending…: Looking for something different to do with pork shoulder? One of my most popular recipes on Season 3 of Project Smoke was Korean Pulled Pork with KB Sauce. It was published this past year in Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades (see below). But there’s one ingredient you likely won’t find at your local Piggly Wiggly—gochujang. It’s a super-flavorful Korean chile paste that I predict will be the next sriracha. Find it in my online store. A must-have barbecue reference: Completely updated and revised, Sauces, Rubs, and Marinades is a virtual encyclopedia of chile-fired rubs, lemony marinades, buttery bastes, pack-a-wallop sauces, plus mops, slathers, sambals, and chutneys belongs in the library of any serious grill jockey. It’s a cornucopia of all the latest flavor trends, drawing from irresistible Thai, Mexican, Indian, Cajun, Jamaican, Italian, and French cuisines, as well as those building blocks from America’s own barbecue belt. Contains over 200 recipes and inspired suggestions for use.

No grill? No problem: Introduced by Charcoal Companion just before the holidays, the KitchenQue stovetop smoker for indoor use is a godsend for people who crave the flavor of real wood smoke but do not have access to a smoker or grill. It is large enough to smoke a whole chicken, fish, brisket flat, prime rib, shellfish, and much, more. Attains temperatures of 400 degrees, meaning poultry will turn out with crisp skin. Works on electric, gas, or induction-type burners. Uses fine sawdust for smoking, which can be easily replenished during a cook. Keep it clean! Viewers of Project Smoke frequently ask how we keep the grills and smokers used on the set so pristine-looking. My fire wranglers use a lot of elbow grease, to be sure. But two products give them a major assist. The first is environmentally-friendly Safecid, an effective grill cleaner and degreaser I use at home. The second is an inexpensive brick of pumice stone that restores stainless steel grill grates to like-new condition. Have you tried any amazing new barbecue products? Tell us about them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or the Board. The post Make 2018 Your Best Year With 12 New BBQ Products appeared first on Barbecuebible.com. Read the full article