This Sort Of Thing Will Be A Problem

Blogging is not my “job” but it has forced me to become a dedicated follower of news. There was a time years ago when I read the front page of Google news and the New York Times and thought I was pretty tuned-in to what is going on. Since then I’ve learned not to congratulate myself and to seek, instead, the news that’s not fit to print: The Intercept, Counterpunch, Al Jazeera, and local/topical news. Putting customized search strings in Google news is another good trick – in case you’re wondering how I manage to scavenge up so much horror about the F-35 program: it comes to me automatically.

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Argument Clinic: Let’s Go, GerrardOfTitanServer

In my recent post about government’s manifest failure in the face of climate change, GerrardOfTitanServer naturally cropped up and started banging the “Nuclear is our only option” drum. I got so annoyed – he has pulled several comment threads into the weeds in the past – with him that I implied that maybe he could fuck off a little bit.

I regret that. The philosophical ideal would be to not be King Thag of This Blog, and fall back on my authority – which is real as far as bits in this corner of the internet go – I should have had the patience to engage, instead. So, I thought about GerrardOfTitanServer’s arguments for, oh, 5 minutes, and noticed a few gigantic, glaring holes in them. This posting is about that, and I welcome and invite anyone who wants to argue with GerrardOfTitanServer to go ahead.

This can be the GerrardOfTitanServer thread and, note to GerrardOfTitanServer: do not continue to drag other comment threads into endless text-walls of argumentation or I’ll shut you down. You’ve got your thread, now, here you go, this is it.

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Sunday Sermon: Victory Conditions

Anyone who’s done a fair bit of gaming will recognize the term “victory conditions.” They’re the way a game designer programatically defines what success is. Victory conditions can be simple, e.g.: “eliminate all hostile forces” or complex, “before turn 20, must have a unit under command control occupying any of the hexes between A-14 and A-20, inclusive.” When you do the thing that fulfills the conditions, you are a success.

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The Use of Nuclear Weapons

Lately, the topic has gotten some air. That’s good, because – in my opinion – most people do not adequately understand the tremendous whopper-level lies that governments have told about nuclear weapons. I have raised some of this topic before, but it’s worth hammering on: the stated use of nuclear weapons is as a deterrent, yet none of the countries that might be involved in a nuclear war have nuclear arsenals that are oriented toward a deterrent purpose. If that doesn’t make you wonder, what will?

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A Good Article About Working In The FBI

This is a depressing view inside the FBI. It does not contradict any of the impressions I have already gleaned from ex-FBI agents I’ve talked to, and projects I’ve worked on where they have been involved. As usual, “not all FBI” – sure, there are some that are talented and not white supremacists – but those people (as the article shows) had to learn to work within a system that was incompetent and white supremacist.

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More FBI Agents Performing Hinkily

As we’ve mentioned before, the FBI supposedly provided 25% of the KKK’s membership during the civil rights era. [stderr] I don’t blame you in the slightest if that is unbelievable – it took me a while to decide that it was probably true. And, we can see the damage that the FBI’s “penetrate and suborn” tactics do: I was listening to Ibram Kendi’s anti-racism podcast the other day, [kendi] and he was discussing anti-asian racism, and mentioned that Richard Aoki [stderr] as an example of Black/Asian cooperation. Oops, no. I wrote him a terse note to check Aoki’s background more carefully – he was an FBI agent trying to get Black Panthers killed, not help them.

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