malada

For all the criticism Elizabeth Warren has gotten over her claims of Native American ancestry and her DNA tests to prove it, I understand her motivation. She originally based her claims on the oral traditions of her family, the stories of discrimination they faced because they were suspected of having 'mixed blood'. So were her family fibbers? Mistaken? The DNA tests proved they were speaking the truth. I understand that because something similar happened in my family.

Growing up I was told I was from Irish-English descent on my mother's side, Slovenian on my father's side. I was told my parents marriage shocked a few of the people in the the small town they grew up in because of this. You have to understand that this is a place that still *buries* people in separate cemeteries according to original (European) ancestry. An Irish Catholic marrying a Slovenian Catholic? Unheard of!

The truth of the matter wasn't revealed to me... it was leaked to me. It appears that my grandfather on my father's side, wasn't my grandfather and my grandmother had my father out of wedlock. What was the truth of my family's history? Those who knew the truth had either passed on or weren't talking. Where once there was certainty and history there was now an empty and blank area.

I never found out the full story of my grandmother and how she came to be pregnant with my dad, or the circumstances behind her eventually marrying a Slovenian widower but I did find out that the name my father carried wasn't *exactly* the one on his birth certificate.

One of my siblings took a DNA test and did some searches on Ancestry.com to attempt to figure out at least a little of our family's history. The DNA test came back almost entirely Irish-English. Whoever my biological grandfather was he wasn't Slovenian. The genealogical search mostly hit brick walls and dead ends. Before the 1920s, our family history vanishes into the shadows.

I'm glad the stories of Senator Warren's family were sounded out and her grasp of her ancestry is more complete. My family? Not so much. My history has become more of a mystery. Years ago my dad joked that we should not go looking in the family tree as you don't know how many horse thieves you'll find hanging from the branches.

-m

I saw a link to a news blurb on TV where they were showing off the latest in bulletproof backpacks for kids.

*blink*

A little bit of googlefoo took me to their web site where they had ballistic backpacks for kids, vests and jackets for adults. From the pictures the jackets look like fairly stylish outdoors wear - a little bulky maybe but nothing that would look out of the ordinary. The jackets go for between 1200 - 2700 dollars, the 'tee' shirts 750, the 'inserts' for backpacks around 300.

From what I understand of this type of ballistic protection it will stop some bullets depending on the range and caliber. The bullet won't penetrate but the kinetic force will still impact you causing damage to bone and soft tissue.

Well, at least for the first bullet. As I understand it, the protection rapidly degrades after that.

Most of the armor will protect your stomach and chest area. This is good if your armed attacker has been trained to aim for the body - like most police officers.

At 700 bucks for chest protection is fairly cheap if you're willing to drop a grand on an assault rifle - because if your aim is to shoot up a lot of people a little protection against the police would be handy.

Your limbs and head would be mostly or completely unprotected. Those backpack inserts? They're fairly small leaving most of your body unprotected. That leaves a lot of heads, arms and legs to be shot up.

Shock and blood loss will kill you too.

So we have an arms race with the well dressed shooter against a well dressed populace. The only winners here are the people selling the guns and the bullet resistant clothing.

-m

This isn't news to most of us here but it's really crystallized for me just recently.

Trump and the Republicans are practicing a version of disaster capitalism just in the political realm. Disaster capitalism seeks out the results of natural (and sometimes man made) disasters, comes in with lots of cash (often heavily levered) to buy out the assets of those ruined by the catastrophe - usually for pennies, drive them out and redevelop for maximum profit.

Disaster politics seeks to *create* political upheaval and controversy then attempts to pose themselves and the only people who can fix what they just broke. Trump sends out his wreaking crew of tweets, rants, rages to sow chaos and division - then makes his demands as the *only* way out of the situation. If there wasn't a situation before, he'll create one.

Once you see the pattern it becomes clear. This is not a ravings of an unhinged person (well, actually they are) but a strategic plan to get his way. It's blunt force, short term tactics. They can be turned against him with a bit of thought, patience and showmanship. The North Koreans knew that and finessed their way into a meeting which gave them great photo ops and gave Trump nothing. I'm surprised Trump walked out still wearing his pants.

Against the Republicans, be cunning and full of tricks.

-m

A sort of follow up on my Randian Horror post... because I have a history with Ayn Rand and "Atlas Shrugged".

I think I first discovered Rand in middle school. To a person living in a Republican, Catholic and conservative family the concept of a free mind was revolutionary. It was the era of staunch anti-Communism and - unfortunately - the Vietnam war. I embraced the concept of Individualism and the free mind heartily.

Of the novel itself I found... problematic. I reread it multiple times - both as a teenager, in my early twenties and early thirties - and once again now in my *cough* old age. There are places where I race excitedly over her words because they can pull one along, yet her dialog oscillates between choppy and preachy. I understand why she wrote it that way but it's contrived in the former and turgid in the later.

I was always puzzled by peoples complaints about her 'love scenes' with its themes of male dominance and physical abuse. Upon recent re-reading I realized that I *always* skipped over those sections as either uninteresting or just plain disturbing. When her main heroine Dagny was involved it *just didn't make sense* - such a strong character allowing herself to be physically abused, owned like property and dominated by her lovers.

It also didn't make sense because all her heroes were supposed to be the best of the best - supermen - not real people but the examples of the highest of human ideals - just like her villains are the lowest of the low. And if the best of the best of the men treat their woman they desire most abusively, how can they be the best? They are little more than the brutes Rand so rages against.

I think a friend of mine said it best when she first saw I had a copy of Atlas Shrugged. "Oh, you read it when you were 13 and out grew it." Pretty much. The worth and dignity of the individual I still hold as true, and the concept that A is A and Reality Exist also holds true. It is the later which made me unable to hold on to Objectivism because the Reality is we are social beings, the Reality is we are interconnected, the Reality is climate change is real and we're the cause of it. The Reality is if you respect the individual as a single person you must respect them when they are in a group.

The reality is capitalism needs to be kept in check or else it's just a game for the looters and moochers. The reality is it's not how much money you've collected but HOW you've collected it.

-m

With the people who trumpet Ayn Rand's Virtue of Selfishness now in charge of the government you'd think that we're facing the Objectivist horror that comes with the territory. Oh no, it's worse.

You see, the deep core and basis (supposedly) of Ayn Rand's philosophy rests on a much older premise: that reality exists and we can know it. Through our senses and our brains we can work out how reality works and lever it to our advantage. It is the person of thought - the rational person - who she sought to elevate. It was the individual, unfettered mind that was to be honored and revered.

In Rand's great work "Atlas Shrugged" she attempted to set forth this philosophy. She raged against the 'looters and moochers' who would leech off the work of men's (and one woman's) minds and spirits. She blamed the philosophy of selflessness: that the individual is nothing and god or the collective is everything. She attacked the looters and moochers who mouthed the virtue of selflessness - who, oddly enough - were more concerned about grabbing all the goodies for themselves and screwing the rest. Yes, they were moochers and looters but they were not philosophers. They didn't care what philosophy was spouted as long as THEY had their hands on the levers of power. The people who Rand painted as the most villainous oddly, were the most selfish. They didn't care about knowledge or art or justice or reality - as long as THEY had the POWER and the MONEY.

Don't think the looters and moochers weren't taking notes while Ayn was ranting about them.

They took the outward signs of Objectivism: Group Bad - Individual Good, Government Bad - Unregulated Economy Good - and went out to fleece the latest group of suckers. They rose to power singing the praises of open markets and open minds while bilking everyone in sight. When banking was deregulated they went to town - the regulations to keep them from committing fraud were gone and they were free to selfishly vacuum up their clients money. Wasn't that the Objective measure of a person's worth? Money? Sure! And now that they're in power, they are the Masters of Pull: they're going to set up the government to enrich... themselves.

Dressed in their Randian clothes the Looters and Moochers are now in charge.

You know what happens when you remove a voltage regulator from an electronic amplifier? You get a quick burst of power then it will burn out. You know what you get if you remove the mechanical regulators from an engine? You get a quick increase in horsepower and then the engine blows up. But by that time the looters and moochers have already cashed in and split the scene.

Paraphrasing Rand's own words, they would cheat and scam the lowest of us for pennies to amass into millions just to finger their wads of cash.

The Modern Randist has embraced the Selfish part and forgotten that A really is A and Reality Exists. Climate change? Pollution? People dying because of the lack of social services? Poisoned air, poisoned food? They're too busy pocketing their tax cuts to deal with those trifles: it's all False News and Democratic Scaremongering! Their callous disregard of the facts of people's lives paint them as sociopaths. Us First. America First. MAGA!

Justice is for suckers and losers. As the Masters of Pull they'll twist the laws to keep the money flowing from your pocket to theirs.

And the looters and moochers of the spirit are right there too - waving the flag and carrying the cross. The religious zealots are in command and they will seek police powers to enforce their cruel, medieval Christianity upon us all.

I do not write this to defend Objectivism or Ayn Rand's writings: closely examined their own conclusions do not pass their own test: that A is A and Reality Exists. I write this to pull off the phoney masks that the looters and moochers have donned. They may spout Rand's philosophy but they are actually the villains she tried to portray in her own novels.

The train wreck is upon us and there is no Galt's Gulch to retreat to. We must take control of the train.

-m

Ubuntu is one of the largest of the Linux distributions (distros) and along with good documentation and community support it has multiple 'flavors' tweaked for different users.

One of those is Ubuntu Studio - a distro packed with audio, video and graphic programs and a specialized kernel for super performance. I've played with an earlier version and wanted to install the latest on one of my resurrected machines.

You can't always get what you want.

On one machine the install choked right after the dvd booted. On another it installed... but won't boot after instillation. Hrm.

Ubuntu Studio is built on top of Xubuntu - that comes with the lightweight XFCE desktop. So I tried Xubuntu and it installed flawlessly. I have to go install all the programs I want but eh, there's always some tweaking that needs to be done on ANY new computer install. I'm missing the low latency kernel but if I really want to I can install it and remove the slower standard kernel. If I was doing professional audio/video work I probably would but since it's all for my own pleasure I might not bother.

The lesson here? Variety is good!

-m

So about that pile of computers I rescued from the dump... eh, er... yeah.

After careful Googling I discovered that two to them could have their CPUs upgraded. One came with a 2.2 Ghz dual core and the other a Pentium D single core. Upgrade the first one to a 3.0 Ghz cpu - 5 dollars? Sounds good.

Swap the old one out and put that into the other one. Now it's rocking dual cores! Upgrade cost: 0 dollars.

Will these 10-12 year old machines ever run GAMES? You know... first person shoot 'em ups? Seems to be the only game type out there. Eh, maybe some older ones with the right graphics cards. And they'll be Linux systems because Windows is 100 dollars a pop. Gaming on Linux is a different discussion. But word processing, web surfing, audio editing, graphics, video editing... a little chancy on the last one but otherwise they'll be fine.

-m

OMG.

Incels - 'Involuntary Celibate' - males who are so poisonous in appearance or demeanor that no female wants to be intimate with them are howling how unfair it is! They hate women so much (but love f*cking them) that they are demanding... demanding! the the GOVERNMENT *do* something about it.

Apparently the want the GOVERNMENT to assign people (or is it just women?) a 1-10 sexy rating and redistribute the pussy so they get their 'fair share'. Because they're entitled to pussy. They don't have to *work* for it - they want the GOVERNMENT to create and enforce sexual slavery.

Poor dears aren't getting laid so the GOVERNMENT needs to step in. Or else they'll start killing random women. What special snowflakes!

It's so UNFAIR that most women see through their hateful rantings and want nothing to do with them. No, they need the GOVERNMENT to FORCE women to have sex with them.

As you can tell by now... my approach is two pronged here - first, that the Incels are demanding sexual slavery and second - they want the GOVERNMENT to enforce it.

We can all agree that slavery IS WRONG... so can you imagine what would happen if you let the GOVERNMENT get involved in sexy time? You know, the most PERSONAL thing someone has?

Are we going to have the Bureau of Sexy Ratings? Can you imagine how badly that will go off the rails? It'll be staffed by the likes of Charlie Rose and Weinstein who'll scoop up all the 10s and leave the Incels with... well... nothing, of course. Incels are male omegas who don't deserve anything anyways. I mean, yeah... they'll be fun to chat about how evil the vagina people are but who'd want them to reproduce?

And as we've seen with the latest tax code, redistribution usually goes UPWARD not DOWNWARD.

Let's top this off with the plain fact that the Incels won't be satisfied with the zeroes and ones on the Sexy Scale - they want the Tens. They may rant and rave how horrible women are but they still want to f*ck them. Care for them as people? Nope. If the Incels screech how disposable women are by threatening to kill us that shows they don't give a damn about women.

And they're nothing new. They're just the latest iteration of the He Man Woman Haters who will stoop to violence to get their dicks wet. They're terrorists. Plain and simple.


-m

From a recent Vanity Fair article about Michael Cohen:

"He has suggested to people close to him that perhaps he should act as his own attorney, because he may be the most apt person to defend himself."


OH PLEASE GHODS YES! AND LET ME BE THE POPCORN VENDER!

-m

Why do story ideas, plot, dialog and character advancement come to me when I'm in tired, in bed and want to sleep?

And when I have time to write the urge to create just abandons me?

And why does the plot have to be so convoluted? Oh, right... because the way the story is set up, it's only reasonable for it be complex and convoluted.

And minor characters want their own stories. SHUT UP... oh, wait... that's kind of cool...

I shouldn't write about people around the centers of power: mages and nobles and merchants. It brings politics and money and complications into the whole thing. You can't write a single thread that isn't tangled in a weave of interconnected ideas and characters and it makes my head hurt.

Maybe I'll write about a nice peasant girl, a shepherd's daughter who... wait.... DON'T FOLLOW THAT DRAGON! Oh no....

IT'S NOT MY FAULT! I'M JUST WRITING WHAT THE CHARACTERS TELL ME TO WRITE!

*sighs*

I just had to trash several hours of painstaking dialog on a scene I realized was appropriate to the characters... if they were several years older and more mature. It also failed to advance the story. I cut it and pasted it into a new folder of 'deleted scenes'. Maybe I can use them in a later story.

And don't talk to me about editing. I'd rather be dusting the ceiling than editing.

-m