somewhere in Austin, 2007

all our disasters

My Favorite Conspiracy Theory

  by Elliot Sperber

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My favorite conspiracy theory —
Which was Blaise Pascal’s as well — is that
The planet’s not round
And the planet’s not flat
The planet’s not even a planet
Goddamnit.
What just may be the way things are’s
That you and I and everyone —
Connie and Maury, and Robert Horry —
We are all in purgatory
Who’s to say?
Some claim to know though
That’s not really possible
At times it seems so obvious
That everyone’s already dead
And each encounter is a test
As the world burns and melts
Like a grilled cheese sandwich

...beating a dead Russian

“Business corruption would have been, should have been the focus of Democrats looking for legal means to remove this president. That’s the low-hanging fruit; that’s where something actually happened. Instead, they went after the president for something he didn’t actually do, and so they look really foolish, and Trump is going to beat the Mueller report over the heads of the Democrats all through next year, and it’s going to be hard for the Democrats to put this behind them.”
    -- Ted Rall

only-idiots-believed-in-russiagate

road to hell

what? the Russians aren't coming?

Taking a gun out, waving it around, and not shooting the other badass with it, is generally not a winning strategy. What often happens, if you’re dumb enough to do that, is that the other badass will take your gun from you and either shoot you or beat you senseless with it.

This is what Trump is about to do with Russiagate. When the Mueller report fails to present any evidence that he “colluded” with Russia to steal the election, Trump is going to reach over, grab that report, roll it up tightly into a makeshift cudgel, and then beat the snot out of his opponents with it. He is going to explain to the American people that the Democrats, the corporate media, Hollywood, the liberal intelligentsia, and elements of the intelligence agencies conspired to try to force him out of office with an unprecedented propaganda campaign and a groundless special investigation. He is going to explain to the American people that Russiagate, from start to finish, was, in his words, a ridiculous “witch hunt,” a childish story based on nothing. 

mueller-dammerung

escape velocity

Processes are in motion of which we are only barely becoming aware; they are larger than our global civilization, they are older than our species. We are not in charge. We only ever dreamed we were, anyway, just as we only ever dreamed we could be “free” of the earth or one another.
    -- Christy Rodgers

achieving-escape-velocity

Blue, or Red?

• "This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."
•     -- morpheus

Who needs a jack in the head when one has a smartphone and an internet connection?

the-matrix-20-years-later

political science

muffin man

thanx and a tip of the whip to Tom

Andy!

Ed!

stop fucking around

Now, in one post, all the news you don't want to read!

“the lights will come back on when the usurper Maduro is overthrown”
    us-stealth-war-on-venezuela
    
“The greatest challenge we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead"
    grieving-in-the-anthropocene

To die well, one must live fully, Abbey thought, and dedicated himself to the task.
    remembering-cactus-ed

diplomacy

Investigators from the Spanish police and National Intelligence Center (CNI) have linked an attack on the North Korean embassy in Madrid on February 22 to the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

elpais.com

your Rx is filled

and hard working americans

todd

stick this in your 737 MAX and smoke it!

"Your own lawyers should be counselling you that Boeing is on public notice and that, heaven forbid, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 crash in this country, the arrogance of your algorithms overpowering the pilots, can move law enforcement to investigate potential personal criminal negligence."
    -- Ralph Nader

open-letter-to-boeing

Rx Bandits

be uncivilized

THE EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF UNCIVILISATION

‘We must unhumanise our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.’ 

1. We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.
2. We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can be reduced to a set of ‘problems’ in need of technological or political ‘solutions’.
3. We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.
4. We will reassert the role of storytelling as more than mere entertainment. It is through stories that we weave reality.
5. Humans are not the point and purpose of the planet. Our art will begin with the attempt to step outside the human bubble. By careful attention, we will reengage with the non-human world.
6. We will celebrate writing and art which is grounded in a sense of place and of time. Our literature has been dominated for too long by those who inhabit the cosmopolitan citadels.
7. We will not lose ourselves in the elaboration of theories or ideologies. Our words will be elemental. We write with dirt under our fingernails.
8. The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop. Together, we will find the hope beyond hope, the paths which lead to the unknown world ahead of us.

dark-mountain.net

the Venezuela deception

David Rovics is a singer-songwriter who tours regularly throughout North America, Europe, and occasionally elsewhere

the-venezuela-deception

burn the grid

The U.S. is well know for cyberattacks as well as for attacks on electricity networks. In 2012 it knocked Syria off the internet when it 'bricked' the central router in Syria while attempting to install malware. In 2015 it systematically bombed Syria's power plants.

It is quite possible that the U.S. is causing the outages in Venezuela's network. The second total outage yesterday and the third today could be explained by a malware hidden within the control system of the whole network or in some important side components. It took the Iranian government months to find the malware that again and again crashed its uranium centrifuges.

    -- b., Moon of Alabama

venezuela-three-total-blackouts-in-three-days

what climate catastrophe?

Nearly two years ago, CNN co-producer John Bonfield was caught on tape telling a right-wing undercover journalist that CNN president Jeff Zucker said this to his executive producers after Trump pulled of the Paris Climate Accords: “Good job everybody covering the climate accords, but we’re done with that. Let’s get back to Russia.”

But nothing matters more now than the existential environmental crises we face, with the climate disaster in the lead.  There’s no chance for social justice, democracy, equality, creativity, art, love and community – or anything else (including profits) – on a dead planet.

    -- Paul Street

hurtling-towards-an-unlivable-planet

worst case scenario

Scientists have been looking at best, middling and worst case scenarios for anthropogenic climate change for decades.......why it always so difficult and controversial to write about the worst cases.

There are basically three (somewhat overlapping) reasons:

1. The credibility problem: What are the plausible worst cases? And how can one tell?
2. The reticence problem: Are scientists self-censoring to avoid talking about extremely unpleasant outcomes?
3. The consequentialist problem: Do scientists avoid talking about the most alarming cases to motivate engagement?

    -- Gavin Schmidt, climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York 

the-best-case-for-worst-case-scenarios

everyone is in training

"Trees too numerous to count have brought down an incredible amount of our system. Some areas can be repaired while others will need to be rebuilt. Our thirty foot right-of-way clearing zone does little when the eighty foot firs from outside of our allowed area come crashing down. Trees on wires, we can deal with. Trees taking out complete sections of poles and wires is a different story. Frankly, our hope and concern is that we continue to receive supplies needed to fix the system."

    -- Douglas County Electrical Cooperative

A century storm came, a foot of heavy white snow on the ground, a real natural disaster.

This part of Oregon doesn’t see this much snow, the last time around 1915, give or take, as snow records are not kept here. 

Big, wet, snowflakes quietly mashed, the gunshot-like sounds breaking the silence starting slowly, turning cacophony meaning picking up in number, those accompanied by booming and thumps meaning limbs thousands of pounds were coming down nearby, the shaking of the house meaning entire trees once 50-80 feet tall.

    -- Chris Zinda

realtime-training

Assange

Whenever I visit Julian Assange, we meet in a room he knows too well. There is a bare table and pictures of Ecuador on the walls. There is a bookcase where the books never change. The curtains are always drawn and there is no natural light. The air is still and fetid.

This is Room 101.

    -- John Pilger

the-prisoner-in-room-101

america

America Doesn’t Exist
-- Elliot Sperber

If you think that you live there
Guess what, you’ve been tricked
You’re not even thinking,
You’re only believing
In borders, and orders
That blossom from myth
That is, from delusion, or nonsense
Or illness, contagious, indeed
And violent, yes
But not at all real, or true
For falsehoods can’t ever be true.
The New World isn’t new, not yet.

a rush of blood to the head

thanx and a tip of the back of my head to Tom

vic

thanx and a flip of the ponytail to Eric

dark skies

Living on a thin line,Living this way, each day is a dream.What am I, what are we supposed to do?Living on a thin line,Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?

As nuclear-armed India and Pakistan engage in military clashes over the disputed Kashmir region, consider that a “limited” nuclear war between them is capable of causing a catastrophic global nuclear winter that could kill two billion people. The inevitable wars and diseases that would break out could kill hundreds of millions more.
    -- Jeff Masters, Weather Underground

Nuclear-Winter-India-Pakistan-War