An attack on one oatmeal eater is an attack on all oatmeal eaters

No, that title isn’t going to make more sense at the bottom of this post, at least not to either of my regular readers. But it will make sense to someone, and that is enough.

The point what I am making is that this is a story, a story which eventually attacked a dear and precious soul innocently attempting to eat oatmeal, but which began life very differently, as a comment on a mommy blog/ recipe site known to all (factcheck: some) as Wonkette.com. On that blog, an author named Evan wrote about Tucker Carlson’s ridiculous conspiracy theory that the loss of some documents (which Carlson purports to be evidence of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden) during shipment by UPS was obviously a work of sabotage by some nefarious Biden supporter/ UPS worker with x-ray vision who randomly reads documents shipped overnight express in case they might reflect poorly upon that worker’s political hero. How he concludes his story, however, made an old story come to mind, a story which must now begin by quoting the conclusion of Evan’s piece reporting on Tucker Carlson’s paranoia.

WARNING: BEFORE THE STORY BEGINS, IF YOU ARE A TRUMP SUPPORTER AND HAVE NOT YET VOTED, IMMEDIATELY BEGIN CHUGGING HOT BEVERAGES AND/ OR EATING OATMEAL, THEN CONTINUE TO DO SO THROUGHOUT YOUR READING, FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY.

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A Perfect Storm

The Seattle Storm have endorsed Biden/Harris: 

The team’s official Twitter account posted a graphic of the Biden/Harris campaign logo along with its team logo accompanied by a short statement that read: “Join us in support of @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris.” The tweet also included a link for people to register to vote.

Now, get this: this was a move by management that they expected to be supported throughout the organization, but not one that came from the bottom up or even one that they felt the need to check in with others about. That’s right, the ownership of the sports franchise is moving forward with an endorsement of a political candidate on behalf not of themselves, but of the franchise – itself a violation of norms in the professional-sports category. On top of that, they’re doing it for the right reasons:

“We don’t typically endorse candidates, but these are NOT typical times,” Gilder wrote.

Added Trudeau: “Our country our world needs to show up and vote for a better future. …

Gilder said the group’s decision to come out in support of Biden and Harris was one representative of the team’s values. “There’s a certain value set that the Storm organization represents that we try to deliver on whenever the owners take a stand on anything,” Gilder said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I don’t think we caught anyone in our organization off guard.”

In endorsing Biden and Harris, Gilder said she hopes for a “return to civility,” along with a better handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and social justice needs. She also said she hopes for a White House that NCAA champions and women’s pro sports champions can return to.

That “social justice needs” quote? That comes in a context:

The WNBA, meanwhile, has been heavily involved in promoting social justice, highlighted by the league’s “Say her Name” campaign during the 2020 season, dedicated to Breonna Taylor

If we get the Seattle Storm & the rest of the NBA and the Trumpists get Chachi? I can accept that.

 

 

Most Important News Story Of The Day

Oh, sure, we could go with something election related. Or we could follow in Wonkette’s footsteps & write about how Kentucky’s Attorney General brazenly lied about the grand jury’s investigation of Breonna Taylor’s killer cops (yes, we’re talking about murderous cops and not about people who kill cops) and about how the dishonest AG was counting on grand jury secrecy to keep his lies from being discovered even as he continued to break required silence on grand jury proceedings with no one to arrest him (since that would be the AG’s job, which would be him) and, finally, about how a new ruling on behalf of a grand jury member who wanted to be able to speak publicly about aspects of the proceedings which the AG had already (falsely) described without going to jail. That’s an important story, an Wonkette has a good write up of it, but it’s not the most important story of the day.

We will, of course, miss the work of James Randi, but while personally affecting, I feel the story lacks quite as much public impact as even the story about the release of the Taylor grand jury transcript’s release. The story about Giuliani’s bid to bed a Borat Betty is amusing if you’re in the right frame of mind, but that’s not important at all. There’s all sorts of election news, of course, but much of it is horse-race nonsense. The election is not won or lost based on polls conducted 2-3 weeks before election day.

No, there’s only one most important news story today:

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Kahnawake Support for Sipekne’katik First Nation

While there has been little to report in local law enforcement developments related to the white efforts to terrorize & sabotage Sipekne’katik Fist Nations lobster harvesters in Nova Scotia – I was hoping for, but not exactly expecting, some arrests on Monday which have not yet materialized as of Tuesday night – there was a noteworthy parade of support nearby. I wish I could say that it was organized by white Nova Scotians on the right side of justice, but it was from a neighboring Mohawk community’s “Peacekeeper” group. Coverage is from the Chronicle-Herald, who is an invaluable local journalism resource covering the attacks on the Sipekne’katik First Nation and the legal/political disputes over treaty rights. I’ll try to keep linking to their stories as they become available. This one I flagged on Monday, but thought I wouldn’t write about it until there were arrests in Friday night’s arson (or the arson from Tuesday the 13th, or, well, any of the violence and arson dating back a month now. But I decided that the lack of law enforcement news shoudn’t keep me from reporting this good news any longer.

Kahnawake Mohawk Peacekeepers provided an escort car at the front of the convoy and another at the rear, said Constable Kyle Zachary of the Kahnawake police force.

The highways remained open, but the convoy did cause “a little bit of an intentional slowdown to draw attention to the situation,” Zachary said.

The Saturday blaze in Middle West Pubnico was set days after police confirmed two raids on lobster facilities had taken place by several hundred commercial fishers and their supporters to protest against a “moderate livelihood” lobster fishery launched by the Sipekne’katik…

Feel free to read the rest at the Chronicle Herald, & I’ll post more when it is available.

 

What a “fiduciary duty” looks like when the police believe in white supremacy

It is long settled in Canadian law that the federal government owes a fiduciary duty to the indigenous peoples of lands now governed by Canada. The meaning of fiduciary duty changes with the specific nature of the relationship between the person owing the duty and the beneficiaries of that duty, but in the context of Canada’s federal government and the indigenous peoples of Canadian land, whether it’s permitting the exercise of treaty rights or engaging in so-called “meaningful consultation” or other duties, Canada’s actions have been far more in breach of those duties than they have been consistent with them.

Nonetheless, one specialist finds the particular lack of care with respect to M’kmaw fishing rights and physical safety to be noteworthy even among all those other violations we might list. The analysis of Adam Bond:

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Terrorism with fire

A Prelude: The Peace & Friendship Treaty of 1752.

It is agreed that the said Tribe of Indians shall not be hindered from, but have free liberty of Hunting & Fishing as usual: and that if they shall think a Truckhouse needful at the River Chibenaccadie or any other place of their resort, they shall have the same built and proper Merchandize lodged therein, to be Exchanged for what the Indians shall have to dispose of, and that in the mean time the said Indians shall have free liberty to bring for Sale to Halifax or any other Settlement within this Province, Skins, feathers, fowl, fish or any other thing they shall have to sell, where they shall have liberty to dispose thereof to the best Advantage.

Just over 20 years ago I was in Canada for a human rights conference and the two main stories surrounding the conference were the abuse of political dissidents by China and then-current attacks on M’kmaw/Mi’kmaq peoples attempting to make a living by hunting, fishing and harvesting according to the rights set out by treaty with the Canadian government. Those rights included the right to a modest living (I believe the court’s language was “moderate”, but I’ll have to check on that) from harvesting lobsters.

Immediately white commercial lobstererers took issue. The white lobster harvesters had dramatically overfished the local waters, and with highly restricted seasons and catch, they saw respecting treaty rights as a threat to their ability to survive.

…And, yes, it was. It still is.

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Holy Shit! Man Walks on Fucking Superconductor!

This from the University of Rochester seems credible to me (though of course IANAP), and in another sense absolutely, positively incredible. Someone has created a “room temperature superconductor” – though a rather cool room, by USA standards, at 14.5/58 degrees.

Obviously it’s a one-off. Like Apollo 11 was not the start of lunar tourism, this breakthrough is not the beginning of superconducting electromagnets powering your car. Still, you can’t get to lunar tourism without an Apollo 11, and you can’t get to cars & kids toys with superconducting electromagnets without work like that of the University of Rochester.

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What a maroon!

FtB generally and Pharyngula in particular had a longtime commenter nymmed What A Maroon. (Miss you! Haven’t seen you! Hope you’re well!) This, of course, comes from the classic Bugs Bunny insult, “What a maroon!” which I have always assumed to be a child-friendly corruption of “What a moron!” but whose etymology I had not examined.

Well, I still have not examined that etymology, but Janelle Shane has a new post up that does dive into the nature of human maroons and other colors. As always, her methodology is to feed data of a certain type into an AI and then see what the AI can create along the same lines. In this case, it’s an experiment in color/personality comparisons that have been popular memes for some time. Shane tells us that

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