Oh, great: the State Department apparently wants to establish an advisory Commission on Unalienable Rights, which purpose is to “provide fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.”
I am no Benthamite; nonetheless, he nails this: Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.
Yes, we’ll soon need to set up Jane Highways to get women from the Gilead states to Canada free states, but in the meantime, Jezebel put together a list of organizations to throw money at to support women.
For those of us who haven’t already been fighting, gear up: it’s gonna get worse, and soon.
I just though of that; I think I like it. Yeah, I think so.
Maybe I’ll add an “!” after the breach; maybe I’ll choose something else, but I think this might be a winner.
And while I hear Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V‘s in this, there’s also a little bit of LEEROY JENKINS! in this, don’t you think? Or is that just me?
Eh, both work.
For better and for worse, the 2020 presidential campaign is upon us. This means I have to come up with a theme for campaign-related posts.
I’m a little leery of doing this, given that my jokey “Circus Maximus” theme turned out to be horrifyingly on the nose. Also, this next campaign is going to be a shitstorm (“Shitstorm 2020”?), and, man, coming up with something that doesn’t make me wail or want to defenestrate my computer is going to take some work.
I have no real ideas at this point. Final Countdown? Apocalyptic, sure, but without that soupçon of wit to lighten it all up. Maybe something from REM’s “End of the World”. . . ? Nah. And, actually, just typing that, I realize that I don’t want anything apocalyptic. Yeah, things suck, but compared to climate change, the stakes of this election are. . . less.
How’s that for perspective? “We’re killing our planet and its creatures, so the fuckery of the Republicans is comparatively minor.”
So I’ll need something serious, mostly-but-not-completely earnest. Mordant. I’ll think of something.
~~~
As for the primary, I’m not planning to say much about it beyond the fact that I don’t fucking want to hear one second more of the Bernie/Hillary rehash. Enough. Both candidates lost. Next!
~~~
I have little faith that the (mainstream) media will do a decent job of covering the elections, and if people are treating the polls as anything other than a nerd-game at this point, well, I don’t know what to say to that.
~~~
I stated back in 2016 that the election broke me, and, yep, still broken. I will make no predictions, and will remain leery (which I failed to do the last time around) of those who do. I’ll pay attention to the polls once 2020 rolls around and listen to smart people say smart things, and, yeah, I’ll consider the odds, but I ain’t laying any bets down.
Honestly, I don’t know how I’ll cover the elections. That my old knowledge has shattered doesn’t mean every piece was wrong, but I don’t know how, or how far I’ll go, to put them together.
On y va.
Happy feckin’ St Paddy’s Day.
Sláinte!
Given the news coming out of federal agencies of stifled staffer communications as well as numerous instances in various Republican-led states of information disappearing from government websites, it is not alarmist to think that information which is currently available may end up disappearing.
If you, as I do, rely on these documents for your work (or whatever), I strongly urge you to download and save this information on your own devices.
I make use of a number of NIH docs, only some of which are easily downloadable as pdfs (which I did); the rest, I screenshot and saved as pdfs. Screenshot-to-pdf isn’t as good as a straight-up pdf doc, but it does allow you to preserve the information.
(I use the free Fireshot add-on, which is really easy to use; there are also others available.)
There are millions of documents which are currently accessible to the public; I dearly hope someone is copying over as many of them as possible.
Militance does not require violence.
Stand up.
Don’t back down.
Sorry, little but little bits:
*I don’t care about Pokémon Go, and don’t care that others care about Pokémon Go.
*Melania Trump’s plagiarism was a) not that big a deal in and of itself, but because it was b) an easily avoidable error, it c) plays into an already-existing narrative that the Trump campaign is a mess. While this might not matter to his supporters, he can’t win the election unless he picks up new supporters, who might side-eye such chaos; thus, d) Melania Trumps plagiarism matters.
*That said, political scientists (yes, the same folks who argued that Trump wouldn’t win the nom, but, moving on. . .) aren’t sure how much campaigns matters.
*I like gin sours more than gin sours like me.
*PSCUNY has finally managed to wrest a contract from the state. Some are opposed, but, man, I don’t know that we can do better than this. It actually more of the past than the future—it deals with 2010-17—so whatever the weaknesses, well, the union’ll be back at the table for the next round soon enough. I’m voting yes.
*Unlike last year, I did stuff my air conditioner into the window and am using it—tho’ not enough to please my cats.
*I have no idea who Hillary Clinton will pick as VP. I’d like to see a pol (not a general), but I’m sure s/he’ll be fine.
*This will haunt me to the end of my days:
Just because this amused me:
I’m not great at deadpan, so appreciate a good droll-take when I see it.
AbsurdBeats 