I never thought Rex Tillerson would seem diplomatic. Our national exercise in Overton Window-shifting has had some results: we are settling for mind-bogglingly foolish because it looks good compared to babbling batshit.
I’m slow on the uptake because I usually have my head in the clouds or I’m glaring at some project and not thinking about anything else. But hanging out at pharyngula back in the scienceblogs days helped clue me in to the gender imbalance in tech. (It required a few privilege-checks and beatings)
The US’ new sanctions on N Korea are expected to cut its international trade by up to 1/3.
Caine posted a bit about The Talk [affinity]. If you don’t want your day tainted by anger now is a good time to stop reading. This piece is going to start cheefully enough but end as dark as you can get.
I fly a lot. Back in the 90s, I flew nearly a million miles in one year (mostly round-trips to Singapore and Japan). Some of the flights I’ve been on nearly ended badly – there was a landing in Orlando where the plane jerked to the side violently in a cross-wind and it looked like the wing was going to hit the ground. Then, there was a landing in Pittsburgh where a tire blew on one side, and things got bumpy.
Human extravagances soon dispel, in the eyes of reason, the superiority which man arrogantly claims over other animals.
Your host, Jean Meslier
72 years ago, the US advanced the state of the art in war atrocities by detonating a 20 kiloton nuclear weapon in the air over the city of Hiroshima.
I’m not a fannish type, but I wrote a fan-letter once – to George MacDonald Fraser, Author, the isle of Man, UK. And I got back a charmingly gracious reply, too. I have read nearly everything Mark Twain wrote, and a measurable percentage of Voltaire but Fraser is the only one of my favorite authors I can claim to have completely read.
Go read this, if you haven’t already.
Shiv asks some questions that I, in my cis-privileged way, have pondered while drunk, weary, or otherwise bleary. I frame it differently but, to me, it boils down to “what is ‘hot’?” and it seems to me that a lot of people don’t put very much thought into that. I have, and all I want to say right now is that it’s instructive to think about it.
I’m naturally suspicious of governments, and the suspicion seems to be mutual. Since I’m not trying to do any harm, that annoys me more than a bit: they want to treat me like a criminal, even though I mostly want to be left alone to live out my life without being interfered with by their wars, walls, economic collapses, and oligarchs. Is that too much to ask?
