15 Mar 2025

A Traveler from a Terrorist Land

I've not been writing, sorry. I've been spun around and spun out by these seemingly never-ending waves of absolute cruelty being blasted out of Washington since a certain sentient malignancy returned to power. I am trying to not let myself become completely overwhelmed by the Caligulesque* level of legislative and executive sadism on parade. I feel constantly exhausted, mentally overstimulated and physically numb. Angry. Unable to focus. Unable to enjoy the things which usually get my mind off of troubles. These aren't ordinary troubles, and these are no ordinary times. There couldn't be a more perfect storm of chaos to decimate the psyche of a justice-sensitive ADHD person. My executive function is nil most of the time. It's Kafkaesque to watch everything being ripped apart around you - jobs, lives, families - and still be expected to function for eight hours at a job, as though everything is business as usual.

I'm supposed to travel out of the country soon. I've had my ticket since December. I always want to be a model visitor when I'm abroad - don't speak loudly, be respectful and polite, remember I'm a guest, be aware of cultural "do-nots", don't stand out. Now, "not standing out" ends the moment I open my mouth and my accent outs me as a citizen of a nation which has betrayed all of its allies in the span of two months. A nation now openly attacking them while praising autocrats and dictatorial regimes and threatening military incursion on our closest friends and trading partners. I am a visitor from the Fourth Reich this time. 

As much as I desperately need to get away from this madness if even for a week, my chances of being singled out as a target for someone's anti-American anger while I'm there are small but not zero. What I fear more right now is US Border Patrol and Customs Enforcement, since they appear to have been re-purposed to instill fear in immigrants, green card holders, and citizens alike. I have not been silent about my disgust for this Administration, and I won't. Silence in the face of injustice is siding with injustice. Given that my last two visits across international airport borders have involved "random additional screening" both ways, and with the FBI currently under the control of a member of the QAnon cult, these points of interaction are the ones which concern me the most.


* A French word that desperately needs to be adopted in English

05 Mar 2025

DarkMatter2525: "Why I Stopped Being Anti-Woke"

 

(from DarkMatter2525)

Suzanne Buckley-Zistel: What Caused the Rwandan Genocide?

 

Postcards from America: The Christians of Instagram Reels

 

from FunkyFrogBait
(Ad Skip: 5.41 - 6:36)

Raspberry Pi 500

I am writing this on my new Raspberry Pi 500, which arrived from CanaKit yesterday. I am both impressed and frustrated,  but mostly impressed - and the frustration will decrease with time as I get more comfortable with RasPi. This will likely be my last non-essential major purchase for quite some time. The monitor is really very sharp and clear, and the computer/keyboard is very comfortable to type on. I've gotten very spoiled running Mint on my laptop, with all of the software available for Intel-based PCs. Software instalallation is not always as straightforward on the RasPi, either. This is all probably for the best though, as it will force me to learn more about Linux, which is never a bad thing. With technology, your choices are always convenience or security - you'll never get both.

It's got a very nice, clean design with a small desk footprint. The monitor also has an indentation on the bottom to allow your cables to pass-through which is just cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing overall.

For under $200, it's a nice system with no telemetry.

23 Feb 2025

An Important Post About Fascism

A Mastodon post from David Chisnall:

Steven Spielberg said, after he made Schindler's List, that it was partly an apology for portraying Nazis in the Indiana Jones franchise as less evil than they really were. I think Hollywood has been guilty of something far worse in recent decades: portraying Nazis as competent.

Germany wasn't a country run by Nazis that happened to lose the Second World War, it was a country that lost because it was run by Nazis.

Take a look at the names of the folks that worked on the Manhattan Project. See how many of them are German? Several of them worked on weapons in the First World War, for the Germans. Germany had a huge lead in developing a nuclear weapon in the '30s, but removed people who weren't Nazi enough from positions of authority in fields related to weapons research. A load of their best scientists were on the various lists that would end up on death camps and managed to leave (others didn't, and died). When you start by saying 'only people from this arbitrary subset of the population based on race / gender / religion / sexuality / whatever may contribute to our society', you won't get the best people.

Hitler maintained control by promoting people based on their personal loyalty to him, not based on their competence. He ensured communication flowed through him and made parallel agencies compete, directing their effort against each other rather than towards shared goals, to avoid any becoming powerful enough to challenge his power structures.

Hitler was almost responsible for most of the German army being wiped out early on in the Second World War because he had an exaggerated opinion of his own ability. The only reason it wasn't was that allied commanders didn't believe anyone could be that stupid and assumed it was a trap (it wasn't, he really was that stupid). He then decided to invade Russia in the winter (which worked so well for Napoleon) against the advice of any of the people who paid attention in school, which was one of the key turning points in the war.

Don't let the smart uniforms fool you. They were not competent people who lost as a result of circumstances beyond their control. They were people with an ideology that was ultimately self defeating in the long term. And, if people with the same views are in positions of power again, they will fail in the same way. The problem is not that they might succeed, it's that they have a habit of taking a lot of other people with them on their way to defeat.

15 Feb 2025

Let's Try This Again

I deleted Wordpress, as I found my cookie-blockers were blocking cookies on the blog. On closer inspection, I noticed one of the attempted cookies was from doubleclick.net.

Nope, nope, nope.

So I'm starting again. Thankfully, I had not written much, and none of it was really worth moving over.