I wonder what Iain Banks would have to say, when he heard about this. I’d hope it would be long, passionate, and full of obscenities. [nyt]
I wonder what Iain Banks would have to say, when he heard about this. I’d hope it would be long, passionate, and full of obscenities. [nyt]
We all know that Donald Trump is an idiot and/or suffering from some kind of debilitating metal disorder. But I still expect better of him than he delivers.
Henry Rollins had a bit in one of his spoken word performances, in which he ridiculed a pentagon spokesperson for talking about “the bunker buster bomb.” Rollins said it quickly, like “BunkerBusterBomb” and exposed the idea of calling a deadly weapon something so silly; pentagon brass sound like kids talking about putting dog shit in a paper bag and throwing it at eachother.
Authoritarians are not used to having to justify their actions; usually they’ll just follow the shortest path between “what I want” and how to make it happen. So, like most human beings who think I’ve been simultaneously baffled and horrified by Trump’s imbecilic attempts to trigger an “obamagate” scandal.
I make things and send them to people, usually via US Mail. I used to find it comforting to be able to engage package tracking and watch my work as it wended its way around the world. As with so many things, coronavirus has changed that.
Like Christine Blasey Ford, Reade is telling a story that is certainly believable, and that she appears to have told some of her friends and family at the time.
The F-35 program has been a litany of glitches and problems, many as a result of the program’s pork distribution approach.
Over at Counterpunch Ramzy Baroud brings an account of Israeli settlers and military deliberately attempting to infect Palestinians with coronavirus. [stderr]
Coronavirus can be thought of as a dry run for how well organized human civilization responds to a global natural disaster. I’m not counting WWI and WWII as “natural disasters” – in fact, they were more like dry runs, too; another chance for concerted and sensible human response to a crisis and another opportunity lost.
But I think it’s OK to gloat about some really fine, distilled, coronavirus irony. I guess I’m just a nasty person; well, that’s who’s running the world today so I’d better jump on the bandwagon.