Decided to share something rather mind-bending today. Don’t worry… this one’s only 9 minutes and 34 seconds long. Of course, if you’d rather watch the 10 hour, 7 minute, and 10 second one, then here you go…
Yet another Twitter thread I want to bring to all of you. There’s been a lot of this “don’t be afraid! Be brave! We need to fight this!” and “turn that fear into determination” bullshit going around, lately…
Fucker, I’m a straight, white, cis-gendered, able-bodied man and I’m fucking terrified.
But I’ll let Elon James White take it from here…
Imma need some of y'all to quit it w/ the "Don't be afraid! We will fight" nonsense.
A lot of folks BEEN fighting. Thats why we're afraid.
— Elon James White (@elonjames) February 9, 2017
This is getting even worse…
JUST IN: Trump signs 3 exec. orders that he says targets gang members, drug dealers, drug cartels & crimes against law enforcement officers pic.twitter.com/jDuRnrrDNX
— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) February 9, 2017
And below the fold, I’m just going to let Netta speak, instead of giving my own commentary…
This is perhaps the most pointless rant I will ever write on this blog. It serves no political purpose, it’s not germane to any current events… I just…
I work at Teavana, and this is, by far, the single most common complaint we get from customers:
Customer (talking about our samples): This tea tastes so much better here then when I make it at home. And I do have the sugar.
Me: What tea are you making at home?
Customer: [It’s usually Youthberry/Wild Orange Blossom, which is a white tea blended with an herbal tea. But it’s almost always a tea, and not an herbal tisane]
Me: And how hot is the water you use to brew it?
Customer: I mean, I [boil it on the stove/heat it in the microwave/get it from the Keurig/get it from the hot-water spigot/…]
Below the fold… snow…
Jeff Sessions confirmed to be the next attorney general
The Senate voted Wednesday to confirm Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama as the next attorney general, surviving a vocal push by Democrats to derail his nomination.
The 52-47 vote was mostly along party lines, though one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin, joined the Republicans to back their Alabama colleague.
Who voted for and against Sessions
The final vote for Sessions — one of Trump’s closest advisers and his earliest supporter in the Senate — came after 30 hours of debate from Democrats and a stunning fight between liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Senate Republicans which ended in her being forced to sit down after she was accused of impugning Sessions.
I got nothin’…
I first saw this on Tuesday’s episode of TWiBPrime.
This asshole is now a Trump surrogate…
I also found the transcript. And I will be including my own rather angry responses to Sean Duffy, as well (although I don’t have many because Alisyn Camerota actually does a good job, here)…
(There are 5 images and a video here…)
This is a pretty awesome story…
Basically, 5 quasars were studied to figure out the expansion rate of the universe, and the results were… interesting:
When astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered nearly 100 years ago that the universe was uniformly expanding in all directions, the finding was a big surprise. Then, in the mid-1990s, another shocker occurred: astronomers found that the expansion rate was accelerating perhaps due to a repulsive property called “dark energy.” Now, the latest measurements of our runaway universe suggest that it is expanding faster than astronomers thought. The consequences could be very significant for our understanding of the shadowy contents of our unruly universe. It may mean that dark energy is shoving galaxies away from each other with even greater – or growing – strength. Or, the early cosmos may contain a new type of subatomic particle referred to as “dark radiation.” A third possibility is that “dark matter,” an invisible form of matter that makes up the bulk of our universe, possesses some weird, unexpected characteristics. Finally, Einstein’s theory of gravity may be incomplete.
These unnerving scenarios are based on the research of a team led by Nobel Laureate Adam Riess, who began a quest in 2005 to measure the universe’s expansion rate to unprecedented accuracy with new, innovative observing techniques. The new measurement reduces the rate of expansion to an uncertainty of only 2.4 percent. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it does not agree with expansion measurements derived from probing the fireball relic radiation from the big bang. So it seems like something’s amiss – possibly sending cosmologists back to the drawing board.
Screw it… you’re getting a whole ELP show.
In 1971, Belgium TV, specifically the show Pop Music (AKA Pop Shop), aired a gig from ELP, recorded live in Zurich, Switzerland on December 4, 1970. Now, for some strange, unexplained reason, the show decided to air the gig massively out of order, starting off with the improvisation that ended the original show in Zurich.
Also, Greg Lake screws up the lyrics to Knife Edge, skipping over the first verse entirely and singing the second verse twice… which is sad, because it’s otherwise the best live version I could find of Knife Edge on video… and I want to give that to y’all in the future, as well… but I’m gonna keep looking…
Regardless, though, it’s an amazing performance from this incredible band, made up almost entirely of instrumental improvisations with some full songs and singing sprinkled here and there. Keep in mind that this is a 52 minute and 1 second watch. It’s a mesmerizing watch, though, especially when Keith does his very best to murder one of his keyboards… with knives… (skip to 16:10 to see how that starts)
This is going to be a long one, so let me apologize in advance. You may want to plan a little time to read it…
There’s a rule about articles or posts that start with a question: the answer is almost always “no”. Whether this post breaks that rule or follows it is ultimately up to you. For me, I think there are enormous roadblocks in Trump’s way, but I absolutely believe that he’s trying, and that he wants to be a dictator. And I also absolutely believe that if we’re not careful, at some point we’re going to see the current administration using the Constitution as toilet paper, and no one will stop them. That’s why I’m writing this…
It’s really a warning… however hard it may be, it is possible, and you better believe that Trump and his administration are already trying to find every possible way to get as close as the can to this outcome as possible.
So… with that said…
I’m going to start this by sourcing mainly from an article written by Eric Posner at Quartz called “The complete guide to how Trump can make himself the first American dictator“, published on March 3, 2016. Obviously, it’s been a long time since then, so I’ll be pulling from much more recent sources, as well…
I’ve said this already, but we are in extremely scary times, and we need to be vigilant. So… without further ado…
If Trump is elected president, will constitutional law and American political institutions protect us from a would-be dictator? Europeans worry about the emergence of Caesarism in the United States, just as the founders did when they invented the presidency. Authoritarianism is making gains around the world; why not here? Of course, Trump may not want to be a dictator. He has repeatedly stated his desire to make “deals,” implying a willingness to cooperate with Congress. But there is no reason to believe anything he says; many of his actions and statements are those of someone with a dictatorial mentality if nothing else, and his popular support derives from his authoritarian image: he appeals to people who yearn for a strongman to protect them. So the question is worth asking. What is the answer?