Stupor Bowl post-script

For most of the history of American football, behemoth arenas, both domed and open to the elements, referred back to the civic venues of the Romans.  Try as it might, the cool blue glass of the U. S. Bank Stadium cannot obscure these origins. It cannot hide the fact that corporate survival and football are both blood sports. Football is gladiatorial combat with a lower immediate kill rate, though not an inconsiderable one, and with grave longer-term neurological dangers. Veterans of foreign wars and domestic pigskin battles were arrayed and honored in Minneapolis, but none of the maimed, or coffined, or fully-addled were. As for the populace itself, its members may not get fed to the lions anymore, but they can still be bled by the powerful.

And manipulated by their minions.

    -- David Yearsley

super-bowl-goose-step

is that a smartphone in your pocket?

....or are you glad to see me?

Along with the familiar camera and microphone, smartphones can pack a slew of other exquisitely sensitive sensors.

Fingerprint/TouchID: Scans the user’s fingerprint

Proximity: Measures the distance of other objects from the phone’s touch screen

Light: Gauges the light level in the phone’s environment

Barometer: Measures ambient pressure around the phone

Accelerometer: Measures acceleration of the device’s movement or vibration

Gyroscope: Evaluates degree and direction of a phone’s rotation

Magnetism: Reports the magnetic field intensity around the phone

Gravity: Measures the force of gravity

smartphones-data-collection-security-privacy

ed. note

Public Service Announcement 2:

Here at GeezerNation, as we seek a fair and balanced approach to “fake news”, from time-to-time even we become sick of the soul crushing nature of the editorial content of the present fake moment- the slow apocalypse.

Therefore, to make available a public therapeutic service for you, blogging person, we offer up kittens.

(note: well, after an exhaustive search to find an appropriate kittens video from the nearly 4,840,000 results on Google and finding none, we have included a non-video photo of our cat)

wimp

For some jobs, only a homicidal maniac will do.

On February 2, it was reported that Korea expert Victor Cha had been removed from consideration for American ambassador to Seoul.  The New York Times said that Cha believes he was dropped because he opposes a US attack on North Korea.

Wimp.

wanted-homicidal-maniac-for-us-ambassador-to-seoul

spook art

Recent writing on CIA’s role in the kulturkampf against the Red Menace paints an image of debonair spooks recruiting the most interesting Western artists and using them, unbeknownst, as a liberal wedge against radical movements at home and abroad. The Agency created cultural institutions, magazines and, most importantly, a financial market to support movements such as Abstract Expressionism; it penned articles in favor of a liberal-leftish ideology of self-expression that could exist only in the ‘democratic’ West; it organized exhibits, printed books, organized press conferences and it paid grants. Episodes from the operations resemble the work of a paranoid comic programmer with sinister preoccupations. It is as if Thomas Pynchon, MK GRVTI 49, was behind the whole thing, perhaps working both sides against the middle, like one of his characters.
    -- Martin Billheimer

assassins-of-the-image-the-cia-as-cultural-gatekeeper
    

dead

flush it

our geo-historical moment

Our species, fully constituted as a geophysical force, now contends with the terrifying consequences of engaging with other biospheric forces.

We are a species in retreat. Pusillanimous descriptions of our geo-historical circumstances such as ‘climate change’ are daily challenged by the occurrence of extreme weather events that disrupt society, destroy infrastructure, and obliterate human life. Twenty lives were lost in Montecito and two others remain missing, buried perhaps, beneath mud or swept out to sea. These events might be more effectively described as Weather Terrorism. However, the ascription of such an inflammatory label to acts of ‘Nature’ - to grant weather agency - requires a profound philosophical re-orientation.
    -- John Davis

weather-terrorism