Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Saturday, August 1, 2020

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1992 - Scheduling Time for Outrage - Weekly Hodge Podge for 2008.01

https://amplifier.org/#downloads-black-lives-matter

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1992 - Scheduling Time for Outrage - Weekly Hodge Podge for 2008.01

Welcome to the WEEKLY HODGE PODGE, a blog feature in which I just dump all the things I have been looking at that I think are interesting, give a weekly COVID-19 update (because we're still in the first inning of a global pandemic), focus on what's going on in the world that's total shit, remind us all that BLACK LIVES MATTER, and occasionally interject less serious things like killer plants, comic books, BASEBALL, and whether George RR Martin has finished Winds of Winter yet. Come on, man!!

One thing I have been thinking about a lot this week, when I am not writing fiction in my head because I have a story due on August 12th, is OUTRAGE and how all consuming it can be.

In fact, to keep the outrage from eating my life, I am trying a three step plan to manage it: schedule time for outrage, find the humor, make time for self-care.

If I do not manage the outrage, it consumes me. The gross injustice of systemic racism that brutalizes and murders people of color or denigrates them and detains them in facilities little better than concentration camps, the lack of leadership and lack of empathy from the occupant in the White House who is little better than a lackey for Putin and America's rich elite, people who refuse to wear masks and recklessly infect others during the worst pandemic in 100 years, people who DENY science, people projecting their own fears and insecurities on others (like accusing Obama of being a pathological liar while defending Trump who is one), and so much more.

It's the powerlessness. I advocate for change. I write about the need for change. I protest in my own way, if not physically, then in writing, in these outcries, because we need change and we need change RIGHT NOW.





NEWS BLACKOUT

Even before the 2016 election ended in a result that was too absurd and loathsome for me to believe it would come to pass and yet it did, I was in a news blackout. I just watched sports. I would get a little bit of news from Twitter, from other social media, from friends and family, from the occasional NPR push notification, and I knew about the big things, but I steered clear of the day-to-day spikes of outrage and injustice because it was all too upsetting.

When Obama was in office, this strategy worked all right because the upsetting stuff was his administrations struggles to negotiate for change with a hateful GOP that is not all that grand and is very old, and so a news blackout served to shield me from atrocities of other kinds: starving Americans, crime and violence in American communities, things overseas like Syria, but the problems at home were not as compelling to keep me engaged in the news cycle.

When Trump lost the popular vote but used collusion with Russia and a corrupt system to occupy the presidency and the White House, the news blackout served as even more of a self-protective measure. I didn't want to subject myself to the news of that hateful man and his despicable cronies and their efforts to reverse every thing Obama did to try to make the country a better place for all people not just rich, elite, old white assholes.

And then severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the COVID-19 disease that results from it "officially" started to spread in the United States, despite the fact that it may have been spreading domestically since October 2019. And so, as a household, we decided to turn on CNN. For a while we had a guest living with us, a medical worker turned out of her hotel by pandemic shut downs, and it seemed even more right to watch a lot of news.

And then four Minnesota cops collaborated to murder George Floyd, shortly after cops murdered Breonna Taylor and racist Georgia fuckheads murdered Ahmaud Arbery, and thousands of people worldwide (though mostly nationwide) with cries of BLACK LIVES MATTER and I CAN'T BREATHE.

And so, we had two reasons to be riveted to the news.

Since then, the news cycle is a constant outrage- producing machine. COVIDIOTS, as they are called, because they do not take the virus seriously and have made things 1000 times worse, which is why the pandemic IS NOT UNDER CONTROL in this country but is in other countries; supposed federal troops who are unidentified and silent storm troopers doing the bidding of America's Darth Vader, though comparing him to the great Star Wars villain gives him too much credit for intelligence, threat-level, and power; failed leadership; racism deniers; science deniers and more. Didn't I write this stuff already? See? Outrage and news are a cycle. Watch news, get angry, express outrage, watch more news, rinse and repeat.

We watch CNN even though we know it's no perfect. But its politics align with ours, and even though the network sometimes gets things a little bit wrong or under reports some news stories, it does well enough and is better than watching the propaganda and racist bullshit that is FOX NEWS, which we have sampled and found to be so nauseating it takes days to achieve the info-toxin cleanse.



OUTRAGE IS A COMMODITY

Social media love it because my anger propels me to click on more things, some of which are the traditional media sources which gets me looking at ads even if I do not click on those. But sometimes I weaken and click the BIG ASS FANS ad or the SLEEPGRAM ad, which resulted in me getting a new pillow that solved my neck pain issue.

But the data shows that my outrage is worth big money. Yours is, too.

Because even though I have long eschewed the over-simplified and puerile labels that are liberal and conservative (true misnomers, if ever there were some) or republican and democrat, now, more than ever, I am willing to align myself with liberals because many (not all) of those on the other side of the aisle are so fucking hateful. And yet, I know that the GOP anger is just as virulent and intense as mine, if not more so (because they're losing).

Daniel Harvey has written about this issue of anger commodity in his wonderful TWENTY MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE blog, and I wrote about it and shared a piece of it via the following:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1646 - 20 minutes into the future - anger is a commodity

Here's my preface to the share:

Harvey writes on SUBSTACK -- https://20minutesintothefuture.substack.com/ -- and looks critically at technology and how we need to re-think how we use technology, what business models we apply to it, and how we counteract the changes it is making for our lives and our sanity.

The most powerful idea here, though not surprising, is that anger is a commodity. Of all the clickbait lures, outrrage fuels the most activity and drives the advertisers trolling for clicks to ever great shocks in the endless clutter and noise that the Internet has become if one participates in it as the great corporations wish each of us to do.

There are key lines in the upcoming content that I adore:

"At the centre of all this are “data factories” and “attention merchants” like Facebook and Twitter. They are all attempting to capture your most scarce resource — your attention — and take it hostage for money. Your captive attention is worth billions to them in advertising revenue."

and

"Because of this, social media makes outrage more prevalent AND more potent at the same time.
It’s more prevalent because social media platforms make it a lot easier to express outrage."

Part one posits that anger is the main commodity of the new social media; part two examines the cost of the "bad stuff" living rent free in our heads and if social media turning us into assholes. Should we nuke all out social media accounts?

Part three examines how nuking the social media may not be the right choice, and for many, not possible.

And so, the solution is a re-consideration of how we utilize and relate to social media as well pushing the space into a new business model that is not advertising driven, which Harvey's company THE DOTS is working to do.

The thing is that fear and a desire for human communication across vast distances as well as narcissism drive social media interactions, too.

I feel I have found ways to be nearly anger free in how I use media. Sure, there are times that outrage takes hold and I post here on the blog about something that I find horrible or untenable, such as this one on detention centers and this one on mass shootings.

I invented my "state of the hate nation" category to house these posts. And yet, it has 44 entries and music has 361, comic books contains 215. and even gratitude has 24. I should hope to boost posts that relate to gratitude or things that I like (119) while keeping the number of hate nation posts under the totals of these others.

Think for yourself. Read on and see if Harvey's commentary resonates with your own experiences. Despite trying to avoid anger online, I get what he's saying. It's real and it's all too common.
The rest in A Sense of Doubt blog post #1646 - 20 minutes into the future - anger is a commodity

AND SO...

To maintain sanity and save time for self-care, I indulge in some viewing of the news in the morning and then again in the evening, and I take some days off from it completely, so that in other times, I can cultivate other pursuits of the mind that are not so divisive and incendiary.

I get angry, and then I let it go.

I try to find the humor, which is why I love WONKETTE, and so there's a lot of WONKETTE in this week's Hodgey-Podgey.

Find the humor, and find time for self-care. What the great DEVO called "Time Out For Fun."




Donald Trump and Theresa May dominate at political cartoon of the ...

And so, I am trying not to be angry.

I am moving on but keeping informed.

I am protesting in my way, though perhaps not y being tear-gassed nightly by a fascist regime of a demented war lord, but in writing and education and the activism that feels right for me at this time.

Here lies the Hodge Podge.

Enjoy the Hodge Podge.



















































Trump Banning TikTok, Surely Not Because The TikTok Teens Ruined His Tulsa Rally

Robyn Pennacchia
August 01, 2020 11:10 AM

Trump announced on Friday night that he would be banning the wildly popular social media app TikTok, most likely today, on the grounds that his administration suspects the Chinese government could use it to spy on us and copy all of our most precious dance moves.

Back in June, hundreds of thousands of TikTok users registered to attend Trump's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with no intention of showing up. This caused the administration to expect a far higher turnout than the 6,200 people who actually showed up, which ended up being very hilarious for everyone watching at home, given how much they had bragged about how many people had signed up. Not only did they have to cancel their overflow satellite rally, but the stadium was very sparsely filled.

Surely, this has absolutely nothing to do with the decision to ban the app.











Progress Report: How we're supporting Black communities and promoting diversity and inclusion











By Vanessa Pappas, TikTok US General Manager, and Kudzi Chikumbu, Director of Creator Community
TikTok is 'fundamentally parastic' and little more than 'spyware ...


 SOME GOOD READING STUFFS


The Cult of Selfishness Is Killing America

My 7-Year-Old Niece Says She’s Friends With the Devil and Tries to Raise Her Toys From the Dead

White Christian America Needs a Moral Awakening
By confronting their faith’s legacy of racism, white Christians can build a better future for themselves, and their fellow Americans.

Want To Escape From America? 12 Countries Where You Can Buy Citizenship (And A Second Passport)


Last August, police officers in Aurora, Colorado, approached 23-year-old Elijah McClain as he walked home from a convenience store. The Aurora Police Department later said that a 911 caller had reported a “suspicious person” in a ski mask, and that when officers confronted McClain — who was not armed and had not committed any kind of crime — he “resisted arrest.” In the 15 minutes that followed, the officers tackled McClain to the ground, put him in a carotid hold, and called first responders, who injected him with ketamine. He had a heart attack on the way to the hospital, and died days later, after he was declared brain dead.
McClain’s family maintains that law enforcement’s use of excessive force led to his death. The officers, however, were subsequently cleared of wrongdoing, apparently on the basis of questionable body-camera footage and an allegedly inconclusive autopsy. McClain’s case has attracted renewed scrutiny amid national protests against systemic racism and the deadly tactics that police often deploy against Black people.

‘Hating Joe Biden doesn’t juice up their base’: Key swing state slips away from Trump

Trump has trailed in every public poll in Pennsylvania since June.

Moscow Elections: The Kremlin Won and Lost - Bloomberg

Long Story Shorter? The Kremlin Is Still Trying To Fuck With Us

Yesterday, House Democrats emerged from a classified national security briefing with a dire warning.

"We do know that Russia is interfering again in our elections," Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. 

"The intelligence community has told us that they are continuing the behavior of what they did in past elections, and there may be other foreign governments that are trying to intervene."

The White House knows that Russia is trying to enlist congressional allies in a scheme to influence the outcome of the presidential election, and they finally agreed to brief House Democrats on it, but for some reason the Trump administration refuses to acknowledge that fact to the American public.

"What I'm concerned about is that the American people should be better informed," Pelosi said. "Leader Schumer and I wrote to them and said tell the truth to the American people and for some reason they are withholding it."

Oh yeah, it's a big mystery! Maybe after we get the Bloodhound Gang on the Case of the Trumpland Refusal to Admit They're Counting on Russia to Keep Them in Power we can put them on The Mystery of Congressman Cowpies and the Hidden DHL Receipt. Then when they solve that one, they can tackle The Search for the Dumbest Republican Senator in All the Land.

Just kidding, you guys, that one is SOLVED.

Trump Gives Oregon Two Days To Clear Out Imaginary 'Beehive Of Terrorists', Or It Gets The Hose Again

Robyn Pennacchia
July 31, 2020 11:45 AM
Maya the Bee screenshot

In the last 25 years, anti-fascists have been linked to exactly zero murders.

In the last 25 years, 329 people have been killed in acts of rightwing violence.

So for those keeping score at home, the current tally is 0-329, with 329 representing 329 more murders than zero.

 Just to be clear.

Yesterday, during a press conference, Donald Trump announced that the withdrawal of federal troops from the city of Portland that had been negotiated between Governor Kate Brown and Vice President Mike Pence earlier this week was merely conditional. That the city and state police had 48 hours to "clear out" what he referred to as a "beehive of terrorists." This will be difficult, as the only people in the whole entire country who have actually been arrested on charges of terrorism related to the protests are the three right-wing Boogaloo bois, all former military, who had been hoping to exploit the protests for the purpose of inciting a race war. (One of whom also allegedly exploited his stepdaughter.)

You can't "clear out" imaginary terrorists.

In his statement, Trump praised the federal troops for their daring rescue of a building, the federal courthouse in Portland, which was in danger of being grafittied to death, and claimed that everyone — reporters, government officials, actual residents of Portland — was collectively lying about it being a protest "as opposed to anarchists and agitators."
So our people have done — Homeland Security have done a fantastic job. They went to Oregon a little more than a week ago. The place was a mess. The city, Portland, was just a disaster. You see it, and a lot of people weren't reporting it right. They tried to pretend it was a protest, as opposed to anarchists and agitators. You understand what I'm saying. It's a mess.

They went there a short while ago, and they saved a federal courthouse that costs hundreds of millions of dollars. And they put a ring around the courthouse and they saved it. But the group that's there is basically meant to save buildings, and they were very strong, very powerful. And they didn't come out too often out of this cocoon that they built in order to save these very expensive, valuable, and psychologically important buildings — right? — like courthouses.
My first question, honestly, is Why would a courthouse cost hundreds of millions of dollars? That is actually just horrifying. Imagine bragging about something like that in a country where not everyone has health care or food, and at a time when the unemployment rates are higher than ever. "Oh hey! We spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a freaking courthouse! Isn't that great! And now we're spending even more money to protect it from graffiti, but extending unemployment benefits? Ooh! Don't think we can swing that one! We hate wasteful government spending!"

Trump then explained that the elected officials in charge of things don't know what they're doing, and then had the gall to whine that he shouldn't have "had" to "go in and clean out the cities" — a thing that absolutely no one there wanted him to do, and which he was really only doing because it appealed more to his base than dealing with the pandemic would:
The governor and the mayor, we've been dealing with them, and we think they don't know what they're doing, because this should not have been going on for 60 days. It's not our job unless, in case of emergency — which I consider now to be an emergency — it's not our job to go in and clean out the cities. That's supposed to be done by local law enforcement.

Yesterday, the governor worked a deal where they'll do it; we'll stand by, they'll do it — and that's good. That was very good, but she didn't report it that way. What she reported was totally different. She said, "I think Trump wants to take over the country." It's crazy.
It's not crazy if it's true!

The gist of all of this is that Trump desperately wants protesters who don't like him to be taken as more of a "threat" than they actually are, because he thinks this will make him look good. It's not about protecting courthouses or saving the city of Portland, it is about painting those who oppose him as terrorists. He also likes that it is a distraction from the far more pressing concern of a virus that is actually killing people.

After that, he got back on the "anarchists and outside agitators" train, because he definitely knows what anarchism is:
So what happened is our people are staying there to see whether or not they can do it today and tomorrow. And if they don't do it, we will send in the National Guard and we'll take care of it. And we're telling, right now, these protesters — and many should be arrested because these are professional agitators, these are professional anarchists; these are people that hate our country. We're telling them, right now, that we're coming in very soon — the National Guard. A lot of people. A lot of very tough people. And these are not people that just have to guard the courthouse and save it. These are people that are allowed to go forward and do what they have to do. And I think that makes the governor's job and the mayor's job a lot easier.
The only person I can think of who could possibly qualify as a "professional anarchist" right now is Noam Chomsky, and I don't think he's a real big physical threat. No one needs the National Guard to take down Noam Chomsky.

Of course, Trump has a tendency — whether purposeful or not — to breathe new life into early 20th century paranoias that once seemed like things we'd only ever read about in history books. It starts with "America First!" and ends with freaking out about anarchists and demanding Palmer raids on the city of Portland.

What Trump is trying to do here is to downplay the legitimate anger of people who are sick and tired of police brutality, who are sick and tired of the status quo, and replace it with an illegitimate anger brought on only because of fires being stoked by nefarious agitators, who are only stoking those fires because they are being paid to do so. Probably by George Soros.
So they're working today and probably tomorrow to clean out this beehive of — of terrorists. And if they do it, I'm going to be very happy. And then, slowly, we can start to leave the city. If they don't do it, we'll be sending in the National Guard.
Beehive of terrorists.

 It says a whole lot about Trump that his main priority right now is attacking a protest in Portland and that he so desperately wants to send the National Guard in to handle it. He didn't want to offer any federal help to areas that didn't have enough COVID-19 tests, he ignored governors who begged him for federal help to deal with that. He cares more about the welfare of an absurdly expensive courthouse than he does about American lives, he cares more about diminishing the seriousness of those who oppose him than he does about American lives.

[Willamette Week]

Coronavirus cartoons: Senate OKs small-business stimulus bill
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/04/21/coronavirus-cartoons-500m-stimulus-bill-for-small-businesses-gets-senates-ok/


















Nothing To See Here GIFs - Get the best GIF on GIPHY


https://www.wonkette.com/sorry-to-interrupt-your-money-but-the-economy-seems-to-be-on-fire

Remember, the plan was to put the economy in a medically induced coma (more or less) for a few months to stop the spread of COVID-19 and give us time to get this pandemic under control. That's what they did in Denmark, and Australia, and New Zealand, and China, which are all returning to some version of normal life now.

But none of those countries is led by a president as spectacularly incompetent as Donald Trump. South Korea, which diagnosed its first coronavirus case the same day we did, had 18 new cases yesterday. We had 63,255. In case there is anyone on Planet Earth who hasn't worked it out yet, coronavirus is definitely not under control in the United States.



Coronavirus cartoons: Artists' takes on the relief package and ...
https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-covid-stimulus-bill-donald-trump-briefing-update-cartoon-20200330.html

https://www.wonkette.com/senate-republicans-take-long-weekend-to-decide-if-you-should-be-able-to-pay-your-rent-tomorrow

For 110 million Americans, the rent is due tomorrow. Also tomorrow, the eviction moratorium (which covered about a third of renters) will expire, meaning that landlords will soon be able to evict an extra 12 million people for not being able to pay rent. Today, for at least 30 million Americans, the $600-a-week extra unemployment benefits they have been counting on to get them through the pandemic — and which the businesses and landlords that have been taking that money have been counting on to pay their own bills — also ends.

(The federal unemployment benefit actually ended earlier in the week, but everyone agreed to ignore that.)

Yesterday, jobless claims rose for the second week in a row. Deaths related to coronavirus topped 150,000. The GDP fell by 33 percent, which is a lot.

In other words, it is about to be an absolute shitshow. And rather than doing something to prevent that shitshow by extending the HEROES Act, Republican senators decided on Thursday to blow off for a long weekend.

The Democratic-led House put forward a $3.4 trillion coronavirus relief bill extending the $600-a-week unemployment benefit through January, which Sen. Chuck Schumer attempted to get the Republican-led Senate to vote on twice on Thursday. They refused. Why? Because the Republicans wanted it reduced, arguing that continuing to provide that benefit would result in a "disincentive" for people to work. Where it is that all of these people are supposed to be working, they did not specify.

On Wednesday, Mitch McConnell swung by PBS NewsHour to explain that although Republicans floated a $1 trillion plan this week that would cut benefits by a lot and also, for some reason, secure $1.75 billion for a new FBI building Trump wanted, many of his GOP colleagues kinda just felt like they'd done enough for people already and did not want to spend any more money. Forget negotiating with Democrats, they couldn't even negotiate amongst themselves.

Coronavirus cartoons: Artists' takes on the relief package and ...
https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-covid-stimulus-bill-donald-trump-briefing-update-cartoon-20200330.html


THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT


Photo of flu patients during the First World War

I am seeing a big discrepancy between the Johns Hopkins data in death totals and WORLDOMETER data, which aggregates data from many more sources. Could this be the slow down due to the change in how the CDC obtains the data, having it filter first through Health and Human Services department.

WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT

Anyway, as usual, here's the weekly links to the data about cases (lower than reality) and deaths (lower than reality, also) due to COVID-19.



Data can be found here, as always:

COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

This is also a good data site:

Worldometer - Coronavirus info

August 02, 2020, 18:05 GMT

 United States

Coronavirus Cases:

4,790,879

Deaths:

158,180

Recovered:

2,371,733




About Worldometer

Worldometer manually analyzes, validates, and aggregates data from thousands of sources in real time and provides global COVID-19 live statistics for a wide audience of caring people around the world.
Our data is also trusted and used by the UK Government, Johns Hopkins CSSE, the Government of Thailand, the Government of Vietnam, the Government of Pakistan, Financial Times, The New York Times, Business Insider, BBC, and many others.
Over the past 15 years, our statistics have been requested by, and provided to Oxford University Press, Wiley, Pearson, CERN, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The Atlantic, BBC, Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology, Science Museum of Virginia, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Kaspersky, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon Alexa, Google Translate, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the U2 concert, and many others.
Worldometer is cited as a source in over 10,000 published books and in more than 6,000 professional journal articles and was voted as one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and largest library association in the world.





https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29567066/jazz-pelicans-coaches-refs-kneel-national-anthem-nba-returns






"I respect our teams' unified act of peaceful protest for social justice and under these unique circumstances will not enforce our long-standing rule requiring standing during the playing of our national anthem," NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement to ESPN.
At least one player, Jazz guard Rayjon Tucker, had his right elbow bent and fist raised during the anthem in the opener, with Lakers star LeBron James holding a raised right fist over his head before the second game.
Michele Roberts, the National Basketball Players Association's executive director, appeared to wipe away tears before the Jazz-Pelicans game. She later tweeted: "Tonight we witnessed sober, powerfully moving and heartfelt demonstrations by our players of their commitment to the pursuit of justice. Very proud."
NEW FAVORITE SPOKESPERSON - CONSULTANT
Seema Yasmin is a British physician, writer and science communicator based at Stanford University. She is Director of Research and Education at the Stanford Health Communication Initiative. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Yasmin helped to debunk myths about the coronavirus. Wikipedia
Institutions: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Stanford University, The University of Texas at Dallas
Alma maters: University of Cambridge, Queen Mary University of London

Stories by Seema Yasmin - Scientific American




Seema Yasmin | The World from PRX



Fauci, Birx mostly missing from TV airwaves amid surge - CNN Video


Mer Young – Praxis Center
http://www.kzoo.edu/praxis/artists/mer-young/
Mer Young

Bio:
Born into a family of artists and musicians, Mer Young’s artistic nature was activated as a child. Young has since created a body of artwork manifested in collages, drawings, paintings, and public artworks. Young’s subject matter focuses on human diversity, a primary source of inspiration which derives from her multi-ethnic background.
Young’s works have been included in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally. Her public art works can be found in the East Village Arts District of Long Beach, CA, in The Sixth and Ninth District of Long Beach, CA, in The City of Glendale, CA, The City of South Pasadena and in the Art District of Los Angeles. She holds Associate Degrees in Fine Arts and Liberal Arts from Long Beach City College and a Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree from The University of Southern California.
Artist Statement:
The collage works are a part of a collection entitled MEYOUWE (me-you-we) which is an oeuvre that explores beliefs in immigration, supports indigenous and native cultures, and women. It commemorates women who have fought for women’s rights and uplifts those who continue to overcome adversities, barriers, and social discrimination. While schematics of discrimination across the globe remain, the women who carry on rapid efforts to combat and position themselves to gain equality should be acknowledged. This artwork collection aims to inspire, celebrate and elevate women of color, immigrants and indigenous cultures.
The collage works are mixed-media compositions with a variant of black and white photographs of women. The use of mixed-media intends to express emblem to a mixed people. Black and white images of native and indigenous women are sought out and implemented to the works to demonstrate the kaleidoscope of people we are without adhering color. These photographs are found from postcards to magazines and printouts. The background of each piece is hand painted in color with acrylic or watercolor paints. Cut out motifs are arranged and layered with glue. Gold paint is used to display symbolism of illumination, understanding, enlightenment, love, compassion, courage and wisdom. The objective of these collage works is to promote attention of women from different ethnic, cultural backgrounds and dedicated to people who have migrated to other parts of the world for a better life.
While this body of work pays tribute to women, embraces immigration, and salutes indigenous and native cultures, it is also a response to repel the hostility shown to women and immigrants under the current U.S. Administration (annus 2017-2020).
Website: https://www.meryoung.com/
Instagram: @youngmer


Q&A: Mer Young on Making Art with Guidance From Our Ancestors
https://newsincerity.us/qa-mer-young-on-making-art-with-guidance-from-our-ancestors/
Trump Not Paying Respects To John Lewis Today, Because Trump Is Garbage
Evan Hurst
July 27, 2020 04:00 PM


https://www.wonkette.com/15-wives-who-really-did-their-husbands-dirty-with-these-mischievous-pranks-tabs-thurs-july-30-2020

More than 150,000 people have died of coronavirus in the US, if somebody wants to explain that to my brother in law. (ABC)

People aren't getting any less nuts about the face masks! — Washington Post

About which, no, there is nothing unsafe. — WaPo

Biden allies move to stop Kamala Harris from becoming vice president. Apparently Chris Dodd thinks she did not show "remorse" for handing Biden his ass in that debate. Other Biden fundraisers complain she is "ambitious." (CNBC)

Even funner, CNBC links to the exact same story in April, except that time they did it to Elizabeth Warren. (CNBC)

Fuck you Chris Dodd and others!

https://wonkettebazaar.com/collections/kamala-2020


An Elegy For Elizabeth Warrenassets.rehttps://wonkettebazaar.com/collections/elizabeth-warren-2020belmouse.io

What this lady in my inbox said!
Shaunna Thomas, executive director of UltraViolet, released the following statement:
"This shameful attack against Senator Harris is rooted in sexist and racist stereotypes. The so-called Biden allies behind this shadow operation should apologize to not only Senator Harris, but Joe Biden as well. These individuals are doing Joe Biden, the woman he will ultimately select as his Vice Presidential running mate, and all women a great disservice with this campaign. We saw the results of sexism in the 2016 race. We can't afford a repeat of that when Joe Biden selects his running mate.

"We expect this kind of sexism and racism from Republicans. We had hoped Democratic donors would be better. I guess we were wrong."
And also her!
The New York Times explains that Joe Biden is more popular than Hillary Clinton because of this thing called "sexism" that the New York Times has never ever ever heard of before and certainly didn't do, why they never! (NYT)


Tabs gifs by your friend Martini Ambassador!


Person Woman Man Camera TV

. Tabs, Thurs., July 23, 2020
Rebecca Schoenkopf
July 23, 2020 08:00 AM

House votes to remove Confederates from Capitol. (Courthouse News)
Missed one:
assets.rebelmouse.io
LOL:
Ken Cuccinelli (whose official title is "Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security")
But not LOL:
[Chad] Wolf affirmed [that he would be sending federal troops nationwide], telling Fox News that his agency can act with or without local cooperation. "I don't need invitations by the state, state mayors or state governors to do our job," he said. "We're going to do that, whether they like us there or not." President Trump likewise vowed to send federal law enforcement agents to several more cities, amid reports that a Portland-like force was headed to Chicago.
So, you know, just an invasion of like every American city, it's all fine. — Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times

Lafayette Square was a debacle ... so Trump took it national. Daniel Drezner has some theories on why. (Washington Post)

Wait, Chicago and Albuquerque? — Politico

Kayleigh McEnany briefing transcript. Don't read it, obviously. (White House)

Oh hey, missed this on my pesky Monday off last week (we are doing four long days now, like firepeople!): Apparently the US attorney for Oregon referred the silly li'l "bring in federal law enforcement to shoot protesters in the face" to the DOJ IG. This is why you open *all the tabs*. (US Department of Justice)

I'm sure that will help, as they're now arresting attorney-moms who luckily already know their rights, since they're sure not reading them to them. (OregonLive)

Hey Liz, are "proactive arrests" a thing? No, they're not? Okay thank you. — Liz at Above the Law

Ninety-nine percent of Portland moms not angry, just disappointed. — Your friend CripDyke

So's the non-fascist career folks at DHS, now that they think about it. (Buzzfeed)

Let's make it easy on them: Abolish DHS. — Fred Kaplan at Slate

Even Defense Sec Mark Esper is concerned? Yeah, call bullshit on that. (Politico)

Republicans don't know what the fuck with another coronavirus spending bill, because they are bad at "government" and also at "people." — Politico

Same as above, Republicans embarrassing themselves on coronavirus bills, except in Slate. — Slate
Thirty million people unemployed, the GOP meeting to figure out what to do (dick-all) about it, and this is what Ted Cruz says out loud, with his mouth:
Cruz said the GOP should be focused on a safe restart of the economy. He said if the economy remains shuttered in November, Democrats will win both the White House and the Senate and that Republican senators, who usually meet in the ornate Mansfield Room in the Capitol, will "be meeting in a much smaller lunchroom" next year.
— Washington Post
No, Twitter's not going to let you harass Chrissy Teigen for QAnon. She's valuable. You're puds. (NBCNews)

Ron Johnson blocked a bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday because it would "cost too much." — Huffpost

Joni Ernst explains over and over again, like these dummies just can't even understand, that the difference between replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the last year of a term, or even in a lameduck session after the election, and replacing Antonin Scalia in the last year of a term, is they are very different things: In one case, the president is a Republican. And in the other case, the president is not a Republican.
Judge won't let South Carolina gov spend $32 million in coronavirus money on private school vouchers? RUDE. — Post and Courier

I ... okay CNN. "Trump's pick to head Office of Personnel Management spread 'satanic' conspiracy theory, called Democrats party of 'Islam' and 'gender-bending'"

Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth "Remain in Love," GET IT GET IT you get it, you are old like me. (Salon)
That's hott.
Here's some more gross shit, like her flap of skin! — Magdalene Publishing
Also fuck it, let's re-create her face.
Is This the Face of Mary Magdalene? | National Geographicwww.youtube.com
Okay thanks Buzzfeed: Here's the Deal With the Baby Witches Who Are Trying to Hex the Moon.
OH MY GOD DO NOT LISTEN TO THESE LUNATICS ON HOW TO MAKE POPSICLES YOU DON'T NEED FIFTY DIFFERENT PURCHASED ITEMS AND A FUCKING OSTERIZER BLENDER YOUR POPSICLES DON'T NEED TO BE ADORABLE AND CREATIVE THEY'RE GODDAMN POPSICLES FUCK IT SHOULD NEVER BE THAT HARD. (CNN)

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/07/28/0127248/trump-blasts-trending-section-on-twitter-really-ridiculous-illegal-and-of-course-very-unfair

Trump Blasts 'Trending' Section On Twitter: 'Really Ridiculous, Illegal, and, of Course, Very Unfair!' (thehill.com)




Posted by BeauHD  from the maybe-people-don't-like-you dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill:President Trump blasted Twitter's "trending" section in a Monday tweet, calling it "really ridiculous, illegal, and, of course, very unfair!" "So disgusting to watch Twitter's so-called 'Trending', where sooo many trends are about me, and never a good one," Trump posted. "They look for anything they can find, make it as bad as possible, and blow it up, trying to make it trend," he added.

The president's relationship with Twitter, where he often turns to speak directly to supporters, has grown more contentious in recent months. The social media platform put warnings and fact checks on two of Trump's posts in May about mail-in voting, saying the tweets contained "potentially misleading information." Twitter also added an advisory to one of Trump's June tweets, which threatened demonstrators who want to create an "autonomous zone" in Washington, D.C. The advisory said the tweet broke Twitter's rules about abusive behavior and threatening violence. The president sought to fight back in May, issuing an executive order intended to strip social media platforms of certain legal protections, though experts say the order is largely toothless and stands on shaky legal ground.

MORE HERE:

https://www.wonkette.com/president-trumplethinskin-knows-whats-important-and-it-is-whining-about-twitters-trending-topics

Hahahahahaha, he probably saw "trumplethinskin" and it made him cry all night. That sad fuckin' loser baby.

The election is in 98 days. Have you made your voting plan?





https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/07/27/2325235/rock-from-mars-heads-home-after-600000-year-odyssey-across-space

Rock From Mars Heads Home After 600,000 Year Odyssey Across Space (theguardian.com)




Posted by BeauHD  from the homeward-bound dept.

A tiny piece of Martian basalt the size of a 10p coin will be launched on board a U.S. robot probe on Thursday and propelled towards the red planet on a seven-month journey to its home world. The Guardian reports:This extraordinary odyssey, the interplanetary equivalent of sending coals to Newcastle, will form a key part of Nasa's forthcoming Mars 2020 expedition. Space engineers say the rock -- which has been donated by the Natural History Museum in London -- will be used to calibrate detectors on board the robot rover Perseverance after it lands and begins its search for signs of past life on the planet. "When you turn on instruments and begin to tune them up before using them for research, you calibrate them on materials that are going to be like the unknown substances you are about to study. So what better for studying rocks on Mars than a lump that originated there?" said Professor Caroline Smith, the Natural History Museum's principal curator of meteorites.

Scientists were confident that the rock they were returning to Mars originated on the planet, added Smith, who is also a member of the Mars 2020 science team. "Tiny bubbles of gas trapped inside that meteorite have exactly the same composition as the atmosphere of Mars, so we know our rock came from there." It is thought that the Martian meteorite was created when an asteroid or comet plunged into the planet about 600,000 to 700,000 years ago, spraying debris into space. One of those pieces of rubble swept across the solar system and eventually crashed on to Earth. That meteorite -- now known as SAU 008 -- was discovered in Oman in 1999 and has been in the care of the Natural History Museum since then.

Among the instruments fitted to the Perseverance rover is a high-precision laser called Sherloc, which will be used to decipher the chemical composition of rocks and determine if they might contain organic materials that indicate life once existed -- or still exists -- on Mars. The inclusion of a piece of SAU 008 is intended to ensure this is done with maximum accuracy. Once Perseverance has selected the most promising rocks it can find, it will dump them in caches on the Martian surface. These will then be retrieved by subsequent robot missions and blasted into space towards Earth for analysis.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/20/07/27/239212/what-the-heroin-industry-can-teach-us-about-solar-power

What the Heroin Industry Can Teach Us About Solar Power (bbc.com)




Posted by BeauHD  from the transformative-power dept.

ljw1004 writes:Helmand Province in Afghanistan produces two thirds of the world's opium. Its opium production has more than doubled in the past eight years, due mostly to solar power. "Solar is by far the most significant technological change" in the region for decades, says Dr. Mansfield, author of the report (PDF). The first solar panels were introduced there in 2013. More recently, solar panel installations have doubled every year, and now stand at 67,000. In Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand Province, solar panels are stacked in the market in great piles three stories high. For an up-front cost of $5,000, farmers can buy panels and a pump to irrigate their fields, and then there are virtually no running costs. "All this water is making the desert bloom," says Richard Brittan, a former British soldier whose company, Alcis, specializes in satellite analysis of what he calls "complex environments."

$5,000 is a lot of money -- the average dowry is $7,000 -- but the panels pay for themselves within two years. Farmers used to rely on diesel, which was more costly, unreliable and adulterated, which led to frequent machinery breakdowns. This "is perhaps the purest example of capitalism on the planet. There are no subsidies here. Nobody is thinking about climate change -- or any other ethical consideration, for that matter. This is about small-scale entrepreneurs trying to make a profit. It is the story of how Afghan opium growers have switched to solar power, and significantly increased the world supply of heroin. What does this tell us about solar power? That is simple. The story of the revolution in Afghan heroin production shows us just how transformative solar power can be. Don't imagine this is some kind of benign 'green' technology. "Solar is getting so cheap that it is capable of changing the way we do things in fundamental ways and with consequences that can affect the entire world," reports the BBC. (Those consequences: far more opium in the world; water table dropping by 3m a year; and a major crisis brewing in 10-15 years when the water runs out, the land returns to desert, and 1.5 million people are forced to migrate.)


https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/07/27/2250213/election-officials-are-vulnerable-to-exim-security-vulnerability-report-shows

Election Officials Are Vulnerable To Exim Security Vulnerability, Report Shows (thehill.com)




Posted by BeauHD  from the email-phishing-attacks dept.

whh3 writes:The Wall Street Journal has an "exclusive" scoop about a report detailing that several counties host their own mail servers using a version of Exim that is vulnerable to exploitation (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), exposing electing officials to potential interference during the upcoming cycle. "[Cybersecurity vendor Area 1 Security Inc.] found that officials in six small jurisdictions in Michigan, Missouri, Maine and New Hampshire, for example, were using a buggy version of a free software product called Exim, which has been linked to online attacks conducted by the Russian intelligence service known as the GRU," reports The Wall Street Journal. The report itself is online here."The report, compiled by cybersecurity group Area 1 Security, found that over 50 percent of election administrators have 'only rudimentary or non-standard technologies' to protect against malicious emails from cyber criminals, with less than 30 percent using basic security controls to halt phishing emails," adds The Hill. "The study also found that around 5 percent of election administrators use personal emails, which are seen as less secure than government emails."

The researchers wrote in the report: "The disparate approaches to cybersecurity by state, local and county officials is such that should a cybersecurity incident occur in one small town, whether in a 'battleground state' or not, even if statistically insignificant, could cause troubling ripple effects that erode confidence in results across the entire country." They noted that 90 percent of cyberattacks begin with a phishing email.


https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/07/29/0132213/misleading-virus-video-pushed-by-the-trumps-spreads-online

Misleading Virus Video, Pushed By the Trumps, Spreads Online (nytimes.com)




Posted by BeauHD  from the dangerous-virus-misinformation dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times:In a video posted Monday online, a group of people calling themselves "America's Frontline Doctors" and wearing white medical coats spoke against the backdrop of the Supreme Court in Washington, sharing misleading claims about the virus, including that hydroxychloroquine was an effective coronavirus treatment and that masks did not slow the spread of the virus. [...] The members of the group behind Monday's video say they are physicians treating patients infected with the coronavirus. But it was unclear where many of them practice medicine or how many patients they had actually seen. As early as May, anti-Obamacare conservative activists called the Tea Party Patriots Action reportedly worked with some of them to advocate loosening states' restrictions on elective surgeries and nonemergency care. On July 15, the group registered a website called "America's Frontline Doctors," domain registration records show. One of the first copies of the video that appeared on Monday was posted to the Tea Party Patriots' YouTube channel, alongside other videos featuring the members of "America's Frontline Doctors."

The video did not appear to be anything special. But within six hours, President Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. had tweeted versions of it, and the right-wing news site Breitbart had shared it. It went viral, shared largely through Facebook groups dedicated to anti-vaccination movements and conspiracy theories such as QAnon, racking up tens of millions of views. Multiple versions of the video were uploaded to YouTube, and links were shared through Twitter. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter worked feverishly to remove it, but by the time they had, the video had already become the latest example of misinformation about the virus that has spread widely. That was because the video had been designed specifically to appeal to internet conspiracists and conservatives eager to see the economy reopen, with a setting and characters to lend authenticity. It showed that even as social media companies have sped up response time to remove dangerous virus misinformation within hours of its posting, people have continued to find new ways around the platforms' safeguards. [...] At least one version of the video, viewed by The Times on Facebook, was watched over 16 million times.
Trump Loves Dr. Demon Jizz And All Her Smart Doctor Pals. Let's Get To Know Them Better!
Evan Hurst
July 29, 2020 08:55 AM

On Tuesday, Donald Trump did one of his coronavirus briefings what are so popular with the kids these days. After telling a Black reporter how much he looked like Michael Bloomberg, Trump called on CNN's Kaitlan Collins, but he didn't tell her she looked anything like Michael Bloomberg. She asked the man who is still president about his retweeting of a doctor who says they make medicine out of the DNA of aliens, who also just happens to really be into hydroxychloroquine ... oh let's just roll tape:
Y'all get that? He was very impressed with Dr. Stella Immanuel, AKA Dr. Alien DNA, AKA Dr. Demon Jizz, but he's never heard of her, but she was with lots of other doctors, and she was tremendous, and she knows hydroxychloroquine is just a really good snake oil cure for the COVID. He did not have a chance to weigh in on whether he also believes people get ovarian cysts or endometriosis, or experience the inability to get an erection, on account of because a demon astral projected into their dreams and fucked the shitfire outta them.
Which is one of the scientific medical things she believes. Which is why we call her Dr. Demon Jizz now.

Oh well, no matter!

Some new reporting has come out on who the rest of those doctors within astral projecting distance of Dr. Demon Jizz were, because of how Trump was also very impressed with them. (He's very easily impressed, just like the stupidest people on your Facebook feed.)
The group that gave the viral (in more ways than one) press conference calls itself
"America's Frontline Doctors," and as Gizmodo reports, when they're not playing supporting characters in "Dr. Demon Jizz: Corona Fighter," they are in other equally stupid places where they might get the ear of the equally stupid president:
"America's Frontline Doctors" [...] appear to have ties to the Trump regime. In fact, one person who spoke at the press conference on Monday was at the White House for a roundtable discussion just a couple of weeks ago and Trump promoted multiple videos from the group on his Twitter account. It's also no surprise that many of them have appeared on Fox News in recent months, the president's favorite TV channel.

Neat.

Gizmodo runs down the medical credentials of Dr. Demon Jizz, and also mentions Dr. Dan Todaro, who specializes in ... well, these days he specializes in pushing Bitcoin!

Awesome. Apparently Todaro really got the hydroxychloroquine obsession going. Thanks, Dr. Bitcoin! Gizmodo links to an old Vanity Fair story, which explains that Elon Musk tweeted about it, Breitbart wrote about it, and another dude who co-authored a paper about Hydroxybonercream 3000 with Dr. Bitcoin ended up on Tucker Carlson's White Power Hour, and you can imagine where the virus spread from there.

There's Jenny Beth Martin, who appears to be Not A Doctor, but she did found a wingnut batshit group called Tea Party Patriots Foundation, and she just really likes Hydroxybonercream 3000, but does not like Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Martin attended a White House roundtable with President Trump on July 7 about reopening schools. During the roundtable she explained that she spearheaded a letter to President Trump with Dr. Simone Gold about the need for reopening schools during the pandemic.

Thanks, Jenny Beth Martin! You didn't take no Hippocratic Oath, so we really can't accuse you of violating one!

Fuckin' giant moron asshole, though!

Simone Gold, the leader of the pack, is an actual doctor, a "concierge immediate-needs physician" from Beverly Hills, and she goes on Fox News all the time, so we bet she is a good doctor. Sticking with the theme of "hanging out with literal scam artists," Gold "also appeared on PragerU's YouTube channel back in May, insisting that more people will die from the lockdowns than from the coronavirus pandemic." Sounds great.
NBC News has more:
Along with America's Frontline Doctors, Gold has been the face of two other contrary medical websites registered since the coronavirus began to spread in the U.S., thegoldopinion.com, and adoctoraday.com, which publishes videos of doctors criticizing state government and public health responses to the disease. Gold was also the first of over 400 doctors to sign a letter to the president in May warning that state lockdown efforts would lead to "millions of casualties."

Mmhmm, she sounds S-M-R-T. She also just really wants the schools to reopen right now, without any social distancing or mask-wearing.

According to Gold's Twitter, she and her fellow fuckheads literally met with Mike Pence on Tuesday:
OK, you clownish quack, whatever you say!

Remember the dumbfuck Fabulous Bakersfield Boys, the ER docs from Bakersfield who went on Tucker Carlson back in April after they did their own dumbfuck viral video, which your dumb MAGA cousin posted on Facebook, what said coronavirus was a mere sniffle? Dan Erickson was one of them! He was there for "Dr. Demon Jizz Presents," the hottest new show for stupid people and stupid presidents about the coronavirus.

As Gizmodo explains, Erickson really has some very cool, very sensible beliefs about lots of things:
During another Fox News appearance in May, things took a weird turn when Erickson started spouting conspiracies involving George Soros trying to censor his message on herd immunity, according to the Washington Examiner.

"Look at what George Soros said about Facebook back in February," Erickson told Fox News. "He said Mark Zuckerberg should no longer have control of Facebook. Well, YouTube, you're going to be next. Soros will say that you should no longer have control, and government should have control of Facebook, according to George Soros."
Absolutely, yep.


Finally, there was Dr. Robert Hamilton, who made this video about how to make dumb babies be quiet:

How To Calm A Crying Baby - Dr. Robert Hamilton Demonstrates "The Hold" (Official)www.youtube.com
In case you don't have time to watch it all:

Shut up, it DOES TOO comfort the baby!

Many thanks to Gizmodo for doing all this research so we can make dick jokes about it and be done.

These are the very real doctors Donald Trump is very impressed with, including Dr. Demon Jizz, who is obviously most impressive of all.

The election is in 97 days. What are you doing today to get this stupid motherfucker out of office?

[Gizmodo / NBC News]
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE!


https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/07/30/012206/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-shows-promising-result-in-animal-tests

Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine Shows Promising Result In Animal Tests (bloomberg.com)




Posted by BeauHD  from the promising-results dept.

Moderna's vaccine candidate against Covid-19 protected against the virus in a trial that inoculated 16 monkeys, an encouraging step on the path to a defense for humans against the pandemic. Bloomberg reports:Two injections of the vaccine protected against heavy exposure to the virus at two different levels of dosage, Moderna said in findings published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The primates didn't show any sign of creating enhanced disease, a problem that has occasionally been associated with vaccines. The results, if they hold up in humans, suggest that the vaccine may be able to protect against Covid-19 in both the upper and lower airways. In all the monkeys who got the high doses of the vaccine, no viral replication was detectable in their noses two days after being challenged with the virus, according to the study results. And no viral replication was seen in the lung fluid of 7 of 8 animals in both dose groups after being challenged with the virus. All 16 monkeys showed at least some sign of protection, with limited lung inflammation seen in the lungs of both groups.The report says that the phase 3 trial, which involves 30,000 humans, will begin producing data in November or December.

If you're curious about how a vaccine trial works, Slashdot interviewed technology journalist and marketer Jennifer Riggins, who is participating in the Oxford Vaccine Trial.

https://www.wonkette.com/yes-dr-immanuel-but-does-demon-sperm-cause-covid


Tucker Carlson FURIOUS You Canceled Dr. Immanuel Before She Could Explain: Does Demon Jizz Cause COVID-19?

Evan Hurst
July 29, 2020 03:05 PM
Screengrab from a Stella Immanuel video that is at least partly about snake penises

We are pleased/filled with sorrow to tell you that there is more news in the scientific field of demonspermology, the foremost expert on which is Dr. Stella Immanuel of Houston. She also is just pretty sure hydroxychloroquine is a miracle drug to cure coronavirus — it is not — but does not mention whether hydroxychloroquine is effective against demon sperm, or whether or not demon sperm causes COVID-19. (If your weenus loses its sense of smell and taste, you might have a problem. A DEMON PROBLEM. We are just saying.)

Immanuel is really not one of those doctors who gives you all the information, is what we are saying.

After Immanuel and a cast of doctors almost as bugfuck as her gave their press conference on quack cures for coronavirus this week, their video went viral on Facebook, and if you know people who post memes about how Noah was also too a conspiracy theorist until it started raining, you saw it there. At least until Facebook started deleting the shit out of the video and any reference to it.

Maybe you saw when Donald Trump retweeted it, because he's that stupid, before Twitter deleted it.

All of this censorship has made Dr. Immanuel very mad. She calmly and medically explained this week that if Facebook does not put her videos back up, Jesus Christ himself will break into Facebook and take the whole site down.


However, just like Christ is still keeping his faithful waiting for the Rapture, he still has not deleted all of Facebook. Laaaaaaaaazy, lazy savior.

There is one thing Dr. Immanuel is not mad about, and it is the opposite of censorship. You see, because all these lib commie rags like the Daily Beast are reporting on her expertise in identifying and destroying the demons who fuck us in our dreams and make us wake up with demon cooties in our Down Theres, she is getting free advertising for these medical facts!

Immanuel was on Twitter last night, thanking the Beast's Will Sommer for all his help:


And she thanked the Beast for reporting accurately about what happens when you are sleeping and all of a sudden the Devil starts whispering sweet nothings into your no-no crotch and all of a sudden you wake up with a new set of medical issues:


Trump, the president of America, promoted this woman on Twitter, because she likes his Hydroxybonercure 3000 snake oil treatment for the novel coronavirus, a disease 150,000 Americans have died of largely because of his malevolent incompetence. In case you forgot why we are talking about this.

Immanuel, who is ALSO just pretty sure human medicines are manufactured with alien DNA — wait, is HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE made with it? — also thanked CNN and MSNBC for the free ads:


In case we did not know Immanuel was being serious about this, she stated this morning that yes, some of us do need deliverance from our demon sperm problems, just like the Duggars' Bible friends warned us so many moons ago:

Cool.

You'd think Trump people would be backing away slowly, but you'd be wrong about how stupid they are.

Say hello again to Trump Campaign and World's Most Biggest Idiot Lawyer Jenna Ellis, who once sent CNN a hilarious nastygram threatening them over a poll that showed (like all the others) that Joe Biden is beating Trump handily. She had a zinger prepared for people who would make fun of Dr. Immanuel's knowledge of what the demons do with their babymakers:

It's funny because Ellis has zero idea how much she just closed escrow on herself right there. Just save that tweet, whenever you need to be reminded exactly who we're up against.

Speaking of Trump idiots, Tucker Carlson also defended Immanuel. And you know why? Because YOU are the real racist, because you are making fun of Immanuel and SUGGESTING she believes in weird shit, what a racist YOU are.

Tucker Carlson defends doctor who believes in demon sex (July 28, 2020)www.youtube.com

CARLSON: Google's countless toadies online did the cleanup work, the ugly stuff. [He means they censored Immanuel.] The Daily Beast attacked Dr. Immanuel for getting her medical degree in Africa and then suggested she believed in witchcraft—because you know Africans do that, right?
The fact that she confirms she believes in this weird shit is, we guess, irrelevant.
Tucker's entire show was hilarious batfucking crazy. He whined about how Trump is down by double digits because Democrats are keeping everybody scared, and then revealed the real reason everybody is censoring Dr. Demon Jizz. Want to hear what YOU did? You cancel cultured poor Dr. Demon Jizz, just because you were threatened by all her actual scientific information about hydroxychloroquine (and demon jizz), and you were worried that if people learned THE TRUTH about hydroxychloroquine (and demon jizz) Trump would lose:
CARLSON: Yesterday the news site Breitbart posted a video of a group of physicians giving a press conference about medical advances in the fight against COVID. Some of the news that doctors delivered was hopeful because there is hopeful news to report. 17 million people saw that video, the president retweeted it. This enraged Democrats. Any scientific advancement that reduces the suffering of Americans in an election year is a threat to Joe Biden's campaign.

So, they decided to pull that video off the internet. [...]

While the rest of us were sleeping, or in the case of so many of our senators, taking payoffs from Google, a tiny number of left-wing corporations took virtually complete control of all news and information in this country.

Now, if Democrats want to erase a politically inconvenient news story fewer than 100 days before an election, they can do that — and they did do it. Big tech censored science. They pulled the video of doctors in lab coats talking about coronavirus research and they hid that video from the public.
That's right, Tucker. Why won't Google and Facebook and Twitter stop deleting all this REAL SCIENCE that's threatening the Democrats, about hydroxybonermagic 3000 and demon jizz?

Truly that is the question. And the answer is obviously that Dr. Demon Jizz was going to cure COVID-19 all by herself, with her hydroxys and maybe some homemade demon sperm bug spray, and then everybody would stop being scared and immediately go vote for Donald Trump, our sainted Dear Leader.

And now nobody is going to do that, because Google was mean to Dr. Demon Jizz.
:(
[Media Matters]
Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE!

 MORE GREAT LINKS FOR READING


https://www.salon.com/2020/07/22/talking-heads-chris-frantz-remain-in-love-tina-weymouth/



https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-bans-7-000-qanon-accounts-limits-150-000-others-n1234541


https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/07/beaverton-attorney-arrested-by-feds-among-mom-protesters-now-barred-from-returning.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=oregonian_sf


https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/laurenstrapagiel/witchtok-hex-the-moon-fae-witchcraft

https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/07/26/0451237/solar-orbiter-delivers-closest-pictures-ever-taken-of-the-sun

https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/07/26/0435253/the-north-poles-of-jupiters-moon-ganymede-probed-by-nasa-spacecraft

https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/07/26/0335253/western-bumblebee-population-drops-up-to-93-over-the-last-20-years

https://news.slashdot.org/story/19/12/26/0222209/fox-news-is-now-a-threat-to-national-security

https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/07/26/0349221/will-global-warming-drive-polar-bears-toward-extinction

Happy Friday! Let's Talk About Mary Trump's Big Gay Interview!

Evan Hurst
July 31, 2020 09:25 AM
screengrab from Mary Trump's interview with Colbert, which is not her big gay interview

Here's a fun one for your Friday, after another week spent in hell!

Mary Trump, AKA the only good Trump, who wrote the summer's hottest social distance beach reading book about her gross shitshow crime boss uncle and the rest of her gross shitshow crime family, did an interview with The Advocate, which is the official magazine of the gays. (Didn't know we LGBTQs had an official magazine? We don't, we just said a lie.)
We hate to be excited about this, but as we are personally a card-carrying member of the LGBTQs, we were delighted to find out Mary Trump is a lesbian. We knew we liked her for a reason, besides the whole thing about how she's completely willing to help tell all her gross crime family's secrets, including the kind that might land a couple of 'em in prison one day.
The interview is interesting for a number of reasons, but we really enjoyed the parts where she talked about her own "coming out" — there wasn't much of one — and how icky her family is about LGBTQ people in general.

MARY TRUMP: Even though homophobia wasn't really explicit in my family, growing up, no one talked about homosexuality one way or another. My family was so anti-everything, anything that was different from them. So, I just assumed they were antigay, and that was something they would not tolerate.

So she didn't tell them. She says she moved in with somebody in her 30s, and still didn't tell them, because her grandmother was a homophobe.

Speaking of Grandma The Homophobe, we are talking about this lady:

Uh huh.

From the interview:
ADVOCATE: In your book, you write that your grandmother said, "It was a disgrace they're letting that little faggot Elton John sing at [Princess Diana's] service," and that kept you from coming out. How did that comment make you feel?

MARY TRUMP: It made me feel awful, mainly because I loved Elton John. I thought it was disgraceful given the context. The man lost someone he deeply loved in a tragic way, and he thought it was best to honor Diana by singing a tribute to her publicly.

The comment by my grandmother was so mean and small. It was not a good moment. As usual, I just ignored it and went on my way, but I knew then that I couldn't tell anyone I was gay.
Such a delightful family, sounds like.

Mary Trump talks about how the entire Trump family is misogynistic, and how a lot of Uncle Donald's propensity for bullshit happy talk comes from a sort of "toxic positivity" exemplified by Grandpa Fred, where anything that veered from putting on a show that everything is wonderful and successful was Not Allowed.
MARY TRUMP: And that's why Donald thinks everything is great all the time because admitting to any kind of pain or failure is a weakness punishable by death.
Sad. The president of the United States is the most unbelievably broken human being. Oh well, maybe he should resign and go find a therapist, because we don't give a flying fuck about his personal problems, except for how they are destroying this country.

Here's what Mary Trump thinks her Uncle Donald actually thinks about the gays and the BLTs:
TRUMP: I think gay people make him [Trump] uncomfortable with male homosexuality. [He likes] guys with no self-awareness. And trans people make him uncomfortable because he's uncomfortable with anyone that's different. And that includes differently abled, different color of skin, and different beliefs.
That really makes a hell of a lot of psychological sense. He would be uncomfortable with gay men, because he's so obsessed with promoting this idea of himself as a big tough macho dude, when in reality all you have to do is look at his Twitter feed to see that he's really just a crying, scared, chickenshit overgrown baby.

Is that better than Mike Pence, who Trump once "joked" wanted to "hang them all"? Meh. Really, it's just more, again, about how broken Trump is. Pence is broken (and evil) in a different way.

This is what Mary Trump thinks we need to do until the election, and it is PILE THE FUCK ON:
TRUMP: The more stress he's under, the more he feels the walls are closing in, which is going to happen. It's unavoidable if we want the November election to go our way. He needs to be piled on. He will never get better and may get worse.
Glad to be of service!

Go read the whole interview, it is nice, the end.
[The Advocate]

 Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE!

Here Is Your Thread For Watching Barack Obama Eulogize American Hero John Lewis
Evan Hurst
July 30, 2020 11:46 AM

The memorial service for congressman and American hero John Lewis began at 11 a.m. in Atlanta. Three living presidents will speak: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, who will perform the eulogy. Speaker Nancy Pelosi will also deliver remarks.

As we publish this, Dubya has just finished speaking. Then it'll be Clinton, Pelosi and, in a little while, Barack Obama.

Donald Trump is nowhere to be found, because fuck him. Oh yeah, he's threatening to delay the election.

What was that John Lewis always said about Good Trouble?

Watch with us. Oh yeah, and read the op-ed Lewis wrote in the New York Times, which he asked to be printed on the day of his funeral.

WATCH LIVE | Rep. John Lewis's funeral in Atlanta, Obama to deliver eulogywww.youtube.com

Obama's speech was a barn-burner. He basically called Bill Barr and Trump George Wallace for how they're attacking Americans in the streets, and that was before he went all the way to the mat on bringing back voting rights in this country.

It's in the video above if you replay, but this video has it cued up:

LIVE: Barack Obama delivers Eulogy at John Lewis Funeralwww.youtube.com

Outdated Fashion Trends Old Women Still Wear! Tabs, Fri., July 31, 2020
Rebecca Schoenkopf
July 31, 2020 08:00 AM
Tabs gifs by your friend Martini Ambassador!

John Lewis would like a final word: "Together You Can Redeem the Soul of a Nation."
While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars.
I still haven't gotten to watch this yet.

LIVE: Barack Obama delivers Eulogy at John Lewis Funeralyoutu.be
Time for some Trump Won't Leave Game Theory? And one of the outcomes is President Pelosi? This is just a lot. (Vox)

When the press buried Obama for ebola and two Americans died. — Eric Boehlert at PressRun

Frontline's got a whole series on conspiracy theory, racism, all the hits. Have I watched it? I have not! — PBS

Alabama state Rep. Will Dismukes, following his attendance at a birthday party for the founder of the KKK, has resigned! No, not as a state rep; as a pastor. — Daily Kos

"Kentucky town hires social workers instead of more officers - and the results are surprising." (They must be doing that thing where you say the opposite of what you mean! Like Jewish people do!) — Wave3News

Yikes, tab from June, but the new postmaster general, whose wife is Trump's Canadian ambassador nom, has 70 million conflicts of interest at the USPS! (Arkansas Online) One billionaire vs. the mail. (It is a Koch.) (Prospect) And they've been secretly cutting down hours, in some places to as few as four a day, and entire post offices are next. (Vice)


Gore Vidal vs Norman Mailer | The Dick Cavett Showwww.youtube.com

Experimental blood test detects cancer four years before symptoms appear? I'll take 10! (Scientific American)

If I listened to podcasts, I am sure I would listen to Michelle Obama's!

Here is a hell of a mea culpa from Romney guy Stuart Stevens! It even calls a racist William F. Buckley racist!
I spent decades working to elect Republicans, including Mr. Romney and four other presidential candidates, and I am here to bear reluctant witness that Mr. Trump didn't hijack the Republican Party. He is the logical conclusion of what the party became over the past 50 or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race-baiting, self-deception and anger that now dominate it. Hold Donald Trump up to a mirror and that bulging, scowling orange face is today's Republican Party.

I saw the warning signs but ignored them and chose to believe what I wanted to believe: The party wasn't just a white grievance party; there was still a big tent; the others guys were worse. Many of us in the party saw this dark side and told ourselves it was a recessive gene. We were wrong. It turned out to be the dominant gene.
A Trump nom too appalling even for Senate Republicans? Anthony Tata must be a hoot! Which is good because they'll doubtless illegally Vacancies Act him anyway! (Daily Beast)
This lady is a pud. She is also running for John Lewis's seat in Congress.


Eleanor Smeal and Gloria Steinem have some thoughts on Cate Blanchett's "Mrs. America" about Phyllis Schlafly, and about them. They would rather none of us watch, because it's a bullshit catfight, they say; also they say Schlafly was just window dressing and they were really defeated by the insurance companies which didn't want to not be able to charge women more for less. MEOW, LADIES! ME-OW! (LA Times)

It almost seems like Jared Kushner's testing plan wasn't complete garbage, before Birx happy-talked that it was going away and the testing plan went "poof into thin air." Oh right there's the Jared we know and love:
Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner's team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. "The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy," said the expert.

That logic may have swayed Kushner. "It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out," the expert said.
So ... just genocide then. — Vanity Fair

Also! Same tab! Today's hearings will be:
[T]he U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus, which is investigating the federal response, will hold a hearing to examine the "urgent need" for a comprehensive national plan, at which Dr. Fauci, CDC director Robert Redfield, and Admiral Brett Giroir will testify. Among other things, the subcommittee is probing whether the Trump administration sought to suppress testing, in part due to Trump's claim at his Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally in June that he ordered staff to "slow the testing down."
We will try to remember to put up a livestream shell on that! IT SOUNDS PORTANT.

The Alaska lege is looking at banning conversion therapy! So Jeb! Bush's former faith based initiatives director, Suzanne Downing, is calling everybody homosexual pedophiles. (Don't click, she's disgusting.)

Zeynep Tufekci, who is the reason I looked at my husband however many months ago and said, "Babe, it is time to get you a bandana for to be a sexy outlaw" after she screamed and yelled about all the Asian countries HAVING NO GODDAMN CASES OF COVID, says it is time to talk about ventilation. So I am guessing we should talk about ventilation! (Atlantic)

Your comrade Sophie would like to sell you a mask or seven.

This is a tab about how Zsa Zsa Gabor had an affair with her stepson, Nicky Hilton; I got there from a Buzzfeed thing. I don't think I like that tab. (Vanity Fair)

27 taco recipes. We could have had these on every corner. — Leite's Culinaria

Yestertoday our platform was ... it was not awesome. So you may have missed a post or eight (at writing time, eight are still missing from the homepage). If it's not fixed already, just know that I know, and my God have I been working on it.

Wonkette is funded ONLY by YOU. We love you.
DHS Doing 'Intelligence Reports' On Journalists​, Like In Real, Live Police State!
Doktor Zoom
July 31, 2020 12:56 PM

The Washington Post broke some news last night about the latest Department of Homeland Security fuckery in Portland, reporting that DHS's "intelligence" branch collected copies of tweets and newspaper articles by two US journalists. They then sent reports to federal law enforcement agencies warning the journos had posted copies of leaked, unclassified internal DHS documents about the DHS compiling intelligence reports on protesters in Portland.
Which makes for a nice circular abuse of intelligence resources, we suppose, but the problem, as the Post points out, is that the reports make use of a "government system meant to share information about suspected terrorists and violent actors." For all Donald Trump's prating on about the press being enemies of the people, reporters are definitely not. (But by all means, buy the shirt!)

The Post summarizes the operation thusly:
Over the past week, the department's Office of Intelligence and Analysis has disseminated three Open Source Intelligence Reports to federal law enforcement agencies and others, summarizing tweets written by two journalists — a reporter for the New York Times and the editor in chief of the blog Lawfare — and noting they had published leaked, unclassified documents about DHS operations in Portland. The intelligence reports, obtained by The Washington Post, include written descriptions and images of the tweets and the number of times they had been liked or retweeted by others.
Pretty dangerous stuff that our brave federal soldiercops need to know about, to be sure. The entire story is simultaneously farcical and disturbing. Here's a government agency treating tweets and newspaper articles as if they were national security matters. It's as absurd as the FBI monitoring John Lennon, "a former member of the Beatles singing group," to see if he was a subversive. It's also chilling, for the very same reasons: You don't use spy tools on people who are simply doing First Amendment stuff. Or rather you're not supposed to.

 In an update, the Post notes that after the story broke last night, (Acting) DHS Secretary Chad Wolf seems to have realized just how stupid and banana-republic-y it all looked; Wolf ordered DHS's pretend spies to knock it off, and opened an "investigation" into the embarrassing fuck-tussle. In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said
Upon learning about the practice, Acting Secretary Wolf directed the DHS Intelligence & Analysis Directorate to immediately discontinue collecting information involving members of the press. [...] In no way does the Acting Secretary condone this practice and he has immediately ordered an inquiry into the matter.
Remember, the reporters had been reporting on another iffy DHS intelligence operation, in which DHS collected publicly available information on protesters it suspected of possibly planning to damage monuments or statues, whether they were on federal property or not, as part of Donald Trump's mission to save America's statues from Antifa. Which sure lends an interesting spin to the statement's insistence that Wolf "is committed to ensuring that all DHS personnel uphold the principles of professionalism, impartiality and respect for civil rights and civil liberties, particularly as it relates to the exercise of First Amendment rights."
So no more spying on journos, but yeah, we're going to keep snooping on protesters, who do need to be treated as potential terrorists.

 The Post points out that the leaked documents posted by the journos "revealed shortcomings in the department's understanding of the nature of the protests in Portland, as well as techniques that intelligence analysts have used." For instance,
A memo by the department's top intelligence official, which was tweeted by the editor of Lawfare, says personnel relied on "FINTEL," an acronym for financial intelligence, as well as finished intelligence "Baseball cards" of arrested protesters to try to understand their motivations and plans. Historically, military and intelligence officials have used such cards for biographical dossiers of suspected terrorists, including those targeted in lethal drone strikes.
Well sure, but since "Antifa" is a terrorist group, according to Donald Trump, it only makes sense American protesters need similar treatment. Warm up the Predator drones!

 And again, the intelligence reports on the two reporters — Lawfare editor Benjamin Wittes and New York Times reporter Mike Baker — aren't supposed to be used for American citizens who aren't doing terrorism.
"This has no operational value whatsoever," said John Sandweg, who previously served as the department's acting general counsel.

"This will just damage the intelligence office's reputation," Sandweg said, calling the decision to report on journalists "incredibly dumb."
Well sure, but since the administration believes Portland is being burned to the ground every night, you can't be too careful. Besides, it's not likely that the reputation of DHS at this point could get any lower.

In fact, it appears Wittes and Baker may have been targeted because the leaked materials they separately reported on made DHS look like a bunch of dipshits who had little understanding of the Portland protests. A DHS memo Baker wrote about, for instance, claimed the protests were part of a longstanding campaign against the government by "anarchist extremists," but it also
acknowledged that "we have low confidence in our assessment" when it comes to understanding the current protests in Oregon's largest city.

"We lack insight into the motives for the most recent attacks," the memo said.
Wittes's offense involved tweeting images of leaked DHS memos telling employees not to talk to reporters. And damn right, it's pretty wonderful that the intelligence report on Wittes was then leaked to other reporters. Wittes told the Post he's not worried that his tweets were circulated, but he is bothered that they were compiled as an "intelligence report," because what's to keep DHS from keeping dossiers on Americans doing journalism? He said he's looking at his legal options.

For our money (a buck and a quarter), the best paragraph in the story is this assessment of the DHS intelligence branch's reputation even prior to this latest fuckup:
The Intelligence and Analysis Office has for years been the butt of jokes among larger, more established agencies like the CIA and the FBI, who liken it to a team of junior-varsity athletes. The DHS office produces reports that are largely based on unclassified, often public sources of information that current and former officials have said are of limited use.
Gosh, guess that's a totally unearned reputation for bush-league spyfuckery.
[WaPo / WaPo]
1992 Chinese Zodiac: Water Monkey Year - Personality Traits
THE YEAR IN NUMBER:1992

ACCORDING to my journal, it looks like I attended a comic con in July, probably the Chicago one the time I went with folks from Fanfare and we stayed in the motel along the way with the big indoor pool behind the glass. I always wanted to stay there and use that pool.

Also, it appears that I went to New York in August of 1992. Visited the Guggenheim (and met my friend Ginger?), also visited my friend Julia who then lived in Brooklyn, then, I think. It's also when I went to a Mets game with my friend Ken and Mercy.

According to my journal, I had just been in New York in December of 1991.

1992 (MCMXCII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1992nd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 992nd year of the 2nd millennium, the 92nd year of the 20th century, and the 3rd year of the 1990s decade.
1992 was designated as:

Year 1992 Timeless Moments scrapbook stickers Headlines, Facts ...



Election 2010: The Year of the Woman? Not Exactly. | Women's ...


RPG of the Year – 1992 | Gun Sage's Blog

Producto Ilícito: Top 40 Hip-Hop Albums of the Year 1992 ...

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 20078.01 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1856 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

oh and this:

Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)