For some reason my memory handed me a rocknroll song from decades ago, the saddest rocknroll song I ever heard. Luckily, it turns out to have been famous enough that You Tube has it. So here it is.
Hey dc, wondering if that strange late March heatwave hit your region. Here the plant world got confused and flowered and sprouted too early then got hit with subsequent seasonal frost and low temperatures. It messed up the normal bloom and growth cycle.
Ah, it’s all out of whack these days. What’s the name of that movie that Philip Glass did the soundtrack for back in the 80’s? Some Hopi word meaning out of balance as far as I can remember.
That’s a good question. When I have a chunk of quiet time I will try letting memories bubble up to the surface of my brain and see what I am presented with. ( I suppose one could say that means that it can’t have been so bad so as to stand out in my memory without my even having to think about it). So I will try coming up with my best answer if I even can.
The corporate power in this shitty country is unbelievable!! So I attempted to make a purchase at an “Adult” website today, $10 and a few cents, not throwing away the money.
So I couldn’t complete it. I called my Credit Union, they didn’t block me, the fucking Visa Corporation did. Those motherfuckers who get people, including students and teenagers deeply indebted, and extort $1,000s or tens of thousands from them over years. Some may end up homeless, lives ruined. These Assholes have deputized themselves as the Guardian/Overseers of Card holders Moral Turpitude? Who gave them the right?
Just talked to a buddy, he and his mom made purchases on the same day of food, blocked, no notice, wtf?
This country has its goddamn head up its ass. You can legally smoke tobacco, dumb in my estimation, but not in public. I once lived in an apartment where the Property manager was Ex-Military, I lived in a state where Cannabis had been legal for 2 decades or so, he thought he smelt something in the Hall one day, he went around 2 floors of the building putting up signs, announcing a formal Inspection of tenants’ apartments in a one-day time window. I was working when the Inspection happened, nothing discovered. The Managers’ rationale– “There’s a pregnant woman on one of these 2 floors”, guess he thought if a few fragments of cannabis smoke were smelled in the hall she’d have a 3-headed baby or something.
I had an MD once who was an utter fucking moron, but arrogant like they are, “I went thru Med school, I’m 600x better than you. Wouldn’t listen, they can’t be bothered. Highly prejudiced. I was living in a new state where cannabis was legal, but insanely regulated, you had to get like a $150 MD Exam, if you were at Death’s Door you would get a card, if not, 45/55% odds you’d have just thrown the $$$ away and got nothing.
If you got the card, you’d get a “discount” but still pay through the nose for access, stuff nearly worth its weight in gold. I went black market, buddy with the card would buy for me, I’d buy him a drink or 2 as thanks.
Once somebody in my part of the hall smelled weed, reported it to our property manager. He contacted me and others in the Hall. He asked about my “use”, possible, actually he was a mellow and decent guy, I told him I don’t bother (I’d often smoke outside) but did report to him truthfully that about 2 weeks before I’d walked out one morning about 7:30 and smelled the Best Weed in the hall, somebody was Waking & Baking. Which I haven’t done since age 20. My youngest brother is a basket case, when our dad was near death I observed him doing this, just pathetic.
Ethan did his investigation someone got into the building and smoked in the Stairwell area, “crime” resolved, no tenants implicated. I was pretty sure I knew who did the misreport, there was an Autistic guy on our floor who I always saw coming in and out with his dog, he would never make eye contact or say hello, only when surprised, like opening a door suddenly and step into someone’s intimate space, then he’d acknowledge your existence and be polite. This guy got elected to the City Council later, I think he had a lot of money, I can’t imagine he had many friends. Once I was outside talking to a mutual friend, he came out, had to acknowledge her, then me too, wow, imagine practicing basic politeness!! But the voters went for this clown!!
Not sure if the link works, see William S. Burroughs Thanksgiving Prayer of 1986, “thanks for a nation of finks”, for a country where Nobody Can Mind their own business. America baby, it’s Hot, Hot!! Says the President, the envy of all.
Want to know why “Voters” in a “Democracy” often choose stoopid? It explains the psychology and optics of selecting the Worst, Titanic Captain types.
Think W Bush Junior (& exclude nepotism, not in the mix here). 4,200 years ago Plato laid the whole thing out, when he was in the Smart mode setting, not his Fascist stage.
This is why dogshit Kamala never had a ghost of a chance against Strongman Billionaire DJT. And the masses learn little, if anything– How many WMD bullshit scares we’ve had since 9/11?
But yes, the New York City voters learned something in the last 2 years, as was covered in another thread. Supporting Genocide and Mass Murder of Civilians is gross. Only one fool on her even disputed that, a big Susan Collins-Stan.
Last Wednesday, most of my healthy epiphyth orchid flowers suddenly shriveled overnight after two days of 39-40 degrees C. The previous end of May had been heat stressful too but this was unexpectedly fast. Interestingly, the terminal individual flowers of each stem are perfectly healthy. The oldest leaves are also slowly shriveling… Sap being sucked up back inside. Amazing survival strategy.
This year heatwaves here (north central Spain) have started more than one year earlier. Little after covid they have become more common and longer. At the end of summer concrete buildings have sucked in so much heat that they become slow cookers.
Wow, thanks Ecoulexegonos commenting from north Central Spain. Sounds like Barcelona, but maybe more like Basque Country? (I lived in Andalucía once upon a time.) I hear Spain is melting in the heat.
Anyway, yeah, it’s Koyaanisqatsi. How erudite of you.
I much appreciate the commentariat here with their intelligence and insights.
Thanks and blessings to all.
Stay cool, stay fresh, and stay away from the haters.
Several years ago someone left a link to a no-commercial-interruptions offering of the entire Koyanisqaatsi movie on one of this blog’s threads. It may still be there, findable with a long enough brute-force thread-by-thread search.
And if found, would the link still be good? Or rotted?
In my youth and middle-age, I lived in a mass communication society and I had a sense from my own consumption of broadcast media, public schooling and a mass-produced culture, what other people (outside my personal acquaintance) thought about events of public concern.
I know that world went away quite some time ago, but for some reason, I recently started to worry about the implications of this state of affairs. Both that I have no firm idea what is on other people’s playlists, so to speak, but also that I suspect most people have only a limited sense of sharing their life and times as part of nested communities and cultures. I don’t mean that people have lost their general feeling of being part of humanity or various subdivisions thereof. What I am saying is that, while still feeling embedded, most people now lack access to any detailed content that they know to be widely experienced in common within their subdivision(s) of humanity.
Looking back over my own time in history, I realize that this state of affairs was emergent already thirty and forty years ago. It surfaced, though I did not recognize it at first, when political culture went to abstract demographic categories. “Asian-American” not Italian-Anerican — categories like Hispanic or LGBTQ+ that don’t share an actual cultural experience, only synthesized, generic narratives.
It came home to me very recently, because I refocused my doom-scrolling partly to Substack, giving up TikTok and X-twitter, toxic addictions that they are. Though they are tailored, indeed curated experiences motivated by the targeting imperatives of commercial and political propaganda, both those platforms work at giving the impression they are hosting a townsquare. You seem part of a larger audience laughing or applauding together, informed and entertained together. News of storms or disasters, celebrity happenings and great were broadcast, seemingly — I was notified. I got to see video of the boom going boom.
My Substack, for some inexplicable reason, has veered off suddenly from liberal chattering-class verbosity in a decidedly conservative direction. “Mamdani is a communist” kind of thing. And, I cannot tell if the algorithm is messing up or maybe there is a shifting mood in the country.
All of a sudden, I am aware that where I might once have had opinions, I now subscribe to narratives that get me admitted to particular, familiar echo chambers. And, if I am confronted with someone enveloped by a narrative I thought “everyone” was ready to reject, I am not sure how to respond. Or, if I should respond? Should I invite him into my echo chamber and point out my collection of dusty facts he has never before seen or appreciated?
On some political subjects where I update my data frequently but my priors not at all — Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, Russia v Ukraine, the fecklessness of the Dem establishment — I find it incredible in a way that some rando on the internet hasn’t got the memos sent to me. I cannot even enjoy the prospect of arguing, because I can already tell this other person is not even sharing the same plane of reality with me and hasn’t been for some time.
I see myself in these Others I encounter. Part of the problem is that I am consuming a pre-digested stream where all the data — the inconvenient facts and complications, balanced genuinely expert opinion — that might prompt critical thinking in contradiction to the fit my preferred narrative seems to have has been filtered out. Apparently, that may be happening to almost everyone!
I have given my memory time to sit and simmer for a while and I don’t remember any unusual heat-waves just this last March. I dimly remember some days approaching 70 but I would have to look at weather data to see if that is a false memory. And near 70 now and then in March is reliably occasional . . . every few years I think.
Somewhere between 8 and 12 years ago we had some days approaching 90 in March and at least one day over 90 itself. I don’t remember what year exactly, but I remember the event very well.
We have been getting warmer-in-general winters ( but with occasional subzero polar outbreaks), and the snow we have been getting is more and more the heavy wet kind, not the dry-type powder we used to expect from deeply winter snowstorms.
Our plants were springing up somewhat earlier this year than they used to do in the past, but not as badly as they have in some recent years. Forsythia should normally bloom sometime in early to mid April and lilacs should bloom sometime in early to mid May. This year the Forsythia bloomed near normal time but the lilacs bloomed sooner than usual and the redbuds were blooming in mid-late April rather than early-mid May. Still, its not like it was in one recent year, where the Forsythia and lilacs bloomed at the same time.
Well, I see this tubity service jams commercials right into the movie just like you tube would and does. The link I remember from years ago did not do that. If that link was tubity itself, that means that tubity itseld has been a little bit degraded.
Erudite? 😀 Not really. I was just quite interested both in Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi back in their time. I knew about Naqoyqatsi years later but didn’t have time to check it then and it eventually slipped out of my “mindmory” (I prefer “memorind”, tho). Btw, by clicking the TubiTV link I get “We’re Sorry. Tubi is the largest free movie and TV streaming service in the US. Unfortunately, we’re not currently available in your area.”
Indeed, Sportugalain, along with the rest of the Mediterranean areas, is starting to be a clear, literal hotspot in the last few years but you still keep hearing strange negationism in the legacy media and politicosphere (not so much when you talk to people). It seems, for example, that extreme heat gives character and inspiration to kids; also a politician (Marta Fernández) thinks kids nowadays are made out of butter because she clearly remembers that “when she was little girl she would often ride her bike outside in summer when it was 40ºC”. The Mediterranean sea, besides probably lately being turned in the biggest human cemetery in the world by homicidal Eurohypocrysy, is becoming a powerful heat pump in its shallowest areas with devastating submarine heatwaves and all.
Last night I came here with the idea of telegraphically posting a few things but got distracted by agrofacts. Some of the things I had in mind:
1) Michel Kuka Mboladinga has become a national sensation in Congo just by attending to worldcup maFIFA matches and systematically mimicking Patrice Lumumba’s statue. No news from Belgium, I guess. I’m truly amazed how some “simple” acts can reignite so much powerful information and help diseminate “stale/forgotten” relevant historical facts despite the Western silence.
2) Hondurasgate audios between ex-presidconvict Juan Orlando Hernández and current president Nasry Asfura clearly unveiled Operation Condor 2.0 and it seems to have worked in Honduras, Bolivia and to currently be working in Colombia. Mexico would be next. In Honduras, one week after the audios were published, an AI slop animation film (Copán: La leyenda) was released all over (even in schools) Honduras as an effective distraction. Surrealistic. Part of the “(panem et) circenses” strategy inaugurated by Berlusconi and followed by other professional clowns such as, among others, Trump, Zelenskyy and Milei… on second thoughts, it was maybe inaugurated by Reagan but it seems to me it was substantially different back then. That’s why Mboladinga’s strategy is being so radly successful (not so much in the West where it’s being perceived, I feel, as a distant, faint echo… just a curio).
3) Cuba’s studies on HEBERSaVax, a promising vaccine which seems to be effective against some malignant cancer tumors, goes on despite USA’s blockade. It entered phase II clinical trials recently. It blocks targeted blood intake to tumors… Will it work? Will USA blockade work?
A typo by me on the Why voters choose shitty leaders post, Socrates 2,400 y.a., not 4,200, Exculgamos not the only one to need correcting.
Koyaanisqatsi a great film, as are the other 2. First saw it when it came out in the Theater, on a big screen, smoked a joint with a friend before entering, perfect way to see it and be blown away.
Recently I upgraded my phone to 5G, it was way overdue, I had a 2018 model that was pretty backward. Now I’m paying 3x as much per month, was only paying $42 prior, but it’s insured, and good. Here’s the other thing, don’t wanna do a commercial for them, but with Verizon when you go 5G you get YouTube Premium. On there I can get all kinds of great movies, media.
Going to recommend a really great Polish film from 1966, in black and white, but features Electronic Music (! In Poland in ’66, Theremin etc.), 3 hours, amazing cast, stories within stories, very exotic, freaky narrative, “The Saragossa Manuscript.” Based on Poland’s most highly regarded book, The Manuscript found in Saragossa. I got the whole film, easily.
The author, Jan Potocki, who late in life decided he was a werewolf, and killed himself with a single Silver bullet to the head, exoticized Spanish culture, as some have done to Arab/Muslim cultures, not the Orientalism that Edward Said warned of, but Hispanicism, the Spanish are extremely sensual, sexual, adventurous, ready to sword fight, great storytellers.
A young Walloon Guard soldier is trying to cross through the ghost and demon-haunted Sierra Morena (Dark Sierra) region en route to Madrid. His 2 Subalterns are variously superstitious and full of fear, or thieving, one will run off with his horse. After getting lost en route, he stops for the night at a haunted Inn, the couple that runs it are getting ready to leave as nightfall looms, “Nobody stays here at night, the demons and ghosts come out!” but leave him a small meal. He is inexperienced but arrogant, his family prominent, “I fear nothing, I’m staying.”
After they’re gone, a beautiful North African Mora women, with one bared breast showing emerges from a basement’s hidden door, carrying a small oil lamp (sign of enlightenment), “Senyor, I am the servant of 2 Moorish princesses who would like to invite you to dinner.” They descend to the basement, and a wonderful repast is laid out with not just food but wine, there are 2 beautiful women there. They tell Alfonso he is their distant cousin & they awaited him here for that reason. “Isn’t your mother a Gomelez, we are Gomelez too!” Yes.
They have never seen a man before, ensconced in a harem in N. Africa, they want to have sex with him to “continue our line”!! If it sounds too good to be true . . . So they do some lesbian kissy stuff to warm him up, soon he’s on the bed with them embracing. Pan out, we know it’s been consummated, 2x at least.
The next morning he wakes up alone, outside on the ground, the look of ecstasy on his face while sleeping evaporates when he opens his eyes, he has a noose around his neck (Masonic reference, Tom Waits has a song about this, “Walking Spanish Down the Hall”), final moments of life, luckily it broke when he was hung from a gibbet between 2 crusty-looking, evil Brigands who are dead. (Christ myth reference.)
The conflict between his own Christian faith and Islam will be core as he meets these women a couple times more on the road. He never advances far, can’t escape the dark wood, but meets a bunch of Allies, stock categories, a mathematician, an Alchemist and his beautiful sister, linked via horoscope, he is a Virgo, she is a Gemini (both signs ruled by Mercury), a Gypsy chief and his clan of horsemen all take refuge from the Inquisition which is pursuing Alfonso, somehow knows of his miscegenation with Moorish damas, in the Alchemist’s castle.
Now what is the Manuscript? Film very faithful to the nearly 400 pp. book. At the beginning, before departing, he was on the losing side in a battle of the Napoleonic Wars, took refuge in an empty house being hit with cannon fire, etc. Found a big, 8 inch thick book of Dali-style Hermetic art, a Crab (Cancer), 2 women in a lesbian embrace, Ladders and Masonic symbols, etc. One of his enemy troops come in, doesn’t attack, “What’s that book you have,” they take a break and share the book . . . Foreshadowing.
Alphonso briefly finds the same book in the Alchemists’ Castle when he’s left alone, then someone distracts him and a confederate steals it away again.
The cast becomes huge, vignettes from the past and future told, stories link to other stories as in the Decameron, etc. Later story shift to Madrid, a voyeur sleazebag, but very handsome is cultivating a nerdy little nobleman, going to set the Poetry-reading Noble up with a beautiful wife, but– the hitch is that she’s the daughter of his father’s greatest enemy!! A sword-fight nearly ensues, after Daddy breaks the Oaths he took and makes his son who he’d forced to take them do so too. A happy reconciliation and marriage follow.
English subtitles for the Polish dialogue. What word do Polish and Spanish have in common,? “Espada”, sword. (Swords in tarot are Air, Intellect, like the dagger.)
So there’s my teaser. Going to disagree strongly with bruce wilder. I’m aware of all of the pitfalls of Identity politics, it’s as often used to divide as unite, step carefully. See KT Chong, or the Banderist LAS.
“I did not recognize it at first, when political culture went to abstract demographic categories. “Asian-American” not Italian-Anerican (sic) — categories like Hispanic or LGBTQ+ that don’t share an actual cultural experience, only synthesized, generic narratives.” I call bullshit. No wonder the algorithm codes you as Republican.
I am Hispanic, white Hispanic now that I’m older, or Latino. “LatinX” a bullshit term of Glib Lib Dividers not uniters, teaching at a High School with a Spanish name and lema (motto), mascotas at athletic events, a Don and a Bull, “Adelante, siempre adelante,” the other Latino staff all thought LatinX pure cringe. That shit is gone, thankfully.
Newt Gingrinch (not sic) and his racist buddies back in the 80s campaigned on “NO HYPHENATED NAMES!!! THAT’S UNAMERICAN!! NO WIRE HANGERS!!” Once you’re here, you don’t speak Czech or Spanish or Greek, or Arabic, you assimilate and become a good, bland, Anglo-Saxon knock-off. “Multiculturalism= Death”, lack of patriotism, dual loyalty (except for ONE group allowed to trumpet their dual loyalty.) Fuck that.
USA would’ve been a shit culture 1,000x worse if we didn’t have Black People to create music with actual life in it, in the 50s Peggy Lee’s “How Much is that Doggy in the Window” top 10 on the radio. Nobody in their right minds would eat UK Jellied Eels (they have a right to if they want), Hispanic, Italian, Chinese food enhance quality of life. N’Awlins cuisine, raw ersters before having a shot of whisky at the bar, Po’ Boy Sandwiches, Shrimp Etoufee, Crawfish, “Suck the head, squeeze the tip.” No that’s not a sex technique (but could be) per the internet, it’s culinary.
Let 1,000 Flowers bloom!! Embrace what’s good from your own cultures (I’m made up of 5-6 known, at least, a Mutt like many Americans, grateful for it), and reject what is negative. Now as to your Hispanic take, you are flat wrong. Until I turned 58, other Latino people recognized I was Latino, even before I’d learned Spanish well during my 6 months crossing from Texas to Nicaragua and Costa Rica, then back across 5 different paises. I didn’t confirm that with a genetic test until age 52, but la sangre can be strong, people know when you share their culture and blood, intuition can be strong too.
I’m 89% white, Euro, only 11% non-white, and so grateful for it. White Nationalist Americans are pigs, I’ll quote DiffClue’s KlanMaga on that. But Libs vote for Lesser Evil so things only get worse.
A little tribute to Like and Subscribe here, I quoted “In Opposition There is True Friendship” recently. LAS thought I was lying and exaggerating about the annual Orgy in the Oakland OTO, Thelema Lodge on 63rd Street, when the Rights of Eleusis, 7 Rituals all 13 days apart, descending from Saturn to Jupiter to Mars to Sol to Venus to Mercury, culminating with Luna, at the end of Luna those who stayed could partake, or you could leave.
LAS claimed I lied when I shared that I was a bisexual slut, Morrisey corrupted me, for about 8 months when I was 25. Now this was immature in a way, maybe more than one way, but I had fun, twice the chance to get laid, as the Divine Oscar quipped. When you’re still young and attractive why wouldn’t you partake of the feast? Within 2 years I’d be reading the OTO upper degree, 7-9 degree papers, and learned to take my sexuality seriously, pick partners wisely and commit to the extent reasonable and possible. LAS’ teasing made me realize this, which I’d previously ignored, so a rare hat-tip to him.
I am not “a spokesman for the gay community” by any means, my fleeting experience does not qualify me. But Bruce Wilder 100% wrong that it’s not a shared identity, for the very obvious reason of Safety and not getting your head bashed in by sexually insecure homophobes. Beyond that, there is genuine gay culture, Mapplethorpe photos, Tom of Finland, Stanton Archives’ BDSM 50s stuff, Lipstick Lesbian films, Todd Haynes’ directed “Carol”, young Mara Rooney rejects the lame boyfriend for sex tutoring with Kate Blanchett, the Kate character’s raging husband tries to take their daughter away, it’s the uptight mid-50s. Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine thinly veiled romance between studly, hugely-hung Iggy Pop, and the more fey, androgynous, makeup wearing David Bowie stand-ins, Science Fiction Easter Egg, Alien Craft bought a magick ring to earth, passed between gay men and the occasional woman, it gives you incredible glamour, you can be a Pop Star and fuck nearly everyone you want, while dressing exquisitely (not Iggy though, a caveman) per Baudelaire’s Injunction about the necessity for Artificiality, it makes us Human. The Kinks’ “Lola”!! Kinky.
Rooney Mara not typecast easily, in The Girl Who Kicked the Dragon’s Nest, she’s a sinister Goth Hacker and spy, under state control of a rapist, but gets her revenge in full.
Sexuality is a gift, FFS, enjoy it as long as you have it. Other queer people recognized me as queer-adjacent even when I’d quit being Bi–, there was an attendant at the California Cannabis Club I’d buy at, I was wearing an Aqua Blue-Green shirt, she gave me the warmest smile, “One of Us.” Now my jape at “As a spokesman for the gay community” was directed at a former coworker, widely despised for her insincerity and posturing by many at our school. A cute, elfin little woman, Kaedan (kind of gender-queer name) within a year after joining the school had her 2nd kid, with a Dude, not artificial insemination, but wrote in the school paper in response to a student query, “As a spokeswoman for the gay community, I think . . . ” Barf!!
I partook of membership in the gay community for a bit, I’m not ashamed of that, it benefited more than harmed me, part of life’s rich pageant, but I will never be “a spokesman” for it; it is very diverse. But we deviants do sometimes recognize one another, it’s a Secret Club, you know your sistren and brethren when paths cross, lots of times, not always. Masons do the same thing, comic book nerds, Star-Trek nerds (never my thing), that’s sociology 101. The Gay Experience is shared, it is not isolated usually, nor hopefully alienated, only the in-the-closet losers do that.
I’m proud to speak Spanish fluently, recently accidentally shamed a young Gabacho at my bank, requested to withdraw $400, “I’m sorry sir, I don’t speak Spanish.” Your loss. Spanish speakers can talk to Italians with a large amount of comprehension, Brazilian Portuguese even closer.
In a hateful, alienated society, we need ligas, links to others within and across culture. YOLO not in the Christian sense, but get allies and friends while you can, Wo/Man is a naturally social animal. So bruce, I’m not surprised the internet codes you Right, based on your broad-brush denunciation of solidarity among “marginal” groups.
Going to close by saying something nice about Kaedan however. So in my school culture there were 2 divided groups of teachers, the Union Activists and Allies like myself, those with self-respect who wouldn’t be bullied, and the Suck-Ups, people who groveled for and thanked abusive Admin (not all admin were abusive, there were about 20% decent), Kaedan was in the latter group. But in addition to posturing as gay, she postured as Ultra-Left.
Now, the Jewish staff all considered me a fellow Jew, I was very honest and always on the fence about it, well, I’m Spanish so it’s possible, but it wasn’t in my 23&Me so I’m not claiming it. Kaeden and the many (not all but a high #) Jewish staff who were suck-ups got to run the boring, North Korean style “community building” (sic) Staff meetings we had twice monthly & got paid extra, we just got bored, one time she turned on her laptop and it had a large “Free Palestine” Banner on it. I smiled to see the barely-concealed rage on several people’s faces, good on K. Take allies when you can get ’em, reject the phonies when it’s obvious.
I was living in Costa Rica when twitter first came on line, and I signed up to share my thoughts on where I was and what I was doing. I composed exactly one tweet on noodle bowls and sent it to a friend. That was it. The great book of face was surging then, but I didn’t bite knowing that I’d get sucked in.
I don’t do much doom scrolling, but I try to keep up with affairs as I have since the pre internet years when Fred Flinstone lived down the street. I’ve grown a bit weary lately with the so called alt community and the various hobby horses. I stopped watching television when I was in college. I stopped reading newspapers long ago when they were still around. No mainstream publications on my reading list either. I don’t know what that makes me, and I don’t care.
I wanted to mention to Mark Level regarding a recent remark I made about don’t sugar coat it. Back in the day when someone went off on a rant, my response was invariably, don’t sugar coat it, tell us what you really think. So that’s where that came from.
Ah, well. Living that Chinese curse of interesting times. Trouble everywhere and the world has gone astray as Bob Marley said.
kamala could not get elected, because the voters saw what she was, just another clintonite con artist, that has reduced america to a third world status. many trump voters actually voted for obama, only to find another defender of bill clintons disastrous polices.
import prices started to rise under obama, this was of course quite predictable. both smith and marx, as well as ben franklin predicted it.
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Import prices in the U.S. began to rise significantly in 2015, with a notable increase in the Trade Weighted U.S. Dollar Index and various commodities contributing to this trend. The import price index saw an 8.3-percent decrease by the end of 2015, but subsequent years showed fluctuations with rising prices, particularly in fuel and lubricants.
bls.gov Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Import prices in the U.S. have experienced significant fluctuations since 2015. The trends have been influenced by various economic factors, including changes in the Trade Weighted U.S. Dollar Index and commodity prices.
2015: Import prices saw an 8.3% decrease by the end of the year, marking a notable decline.
Post-2015: Following the decrease, import prices began to rise again, particularly driven by increases in fuel and lubricants.
Factors Influencing Import Prices
Year Import Price Change Key Influencing Factors
2015 -8.3% Decline in commodity prices
2016-2020 Fluctuations Variations in fuel prices and demand
2021-2026 Rising prices Increased demand and geopolitical factors
The rise in import prices, especially in fuel and lubricants, has been a significant trend in recent years, reflecting broader economic conditions and market dynamics.
Trading Economics Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
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“Democrats have an electability problem in America’s industrial heartland that could flip the Senate red for a decade to come.
An intervention seems necessary, and it should come not from the corporate Democrats who got us into this mess.
In a new study, “Factory Towns,” Iowa Democratic analyst Richard Martin examines the 853 counties of upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. He reports that 618 of these counties lost manufacturing jobs from 2001 to 2019.
Perhaps not coincidentally, between the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections, the 565 counties he designates “small and midsized manufacturing counties” saw a 2,635,000-vote net gain for GOP candidate Donald Trump. Add a 557,000 vote GOP gain from the 209 “rural counties” and that’s 3,192,000 votes in 2020 — which dwarfs the 1,188,000 Democratic-vote gain in the 79 “metro,” “college” and “suburban” counties from the study.
It’s likely that Trump won a significant number of votes in these economically anxious communities with promises to create factory jobs and to stand up to a Democratic elite that had shipped those jobs overseas (and was planning to again with the Trans-Pacific Partnership).
Recall how, in the 1990s, the Clintonites and their Democratic Leadership Council buddies rewarded the corporate donor class with NAFTA, leaving displaced factory workers behind. Martin reports that, in the 382 manufacturing counties where Trump votes grew, 496,000 factory jobs were lost from 2001 to 2019.
From 2010 to 2020, the United States lost 462,000 union members; 93% of that decline came in nine of the states studied (upstate New York data was not available).
In the past two decades, Democrats have sought to forge a governing majority by winning the support of various (and overlapping) Democratic-leaning demographic groups: Latinos, African Americans, the highly educated, suburban women, union members, LGBTQ people and the Left (always as the junior partner and never in charge). In 2008 and 2012, that strategy maintained enough working-class white voters in the Midwest to secure former President Barack Obama’s victory. In 2016, Democrats lost the Electoral College when Trump carried eight states Obama had won in 2008 including Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, swing states featured in “Factory Towns.” ”
“A very important think tank study was just issued and it is a must-read for everyone interested in politics. “Factory Towns,” a report from the organizations American Family Voices and 21st Century Democrats, examines where the Democrats have lost ground since the 2012 election in 10 Midwestern states.
Control of the White House and the Congress rests with the ability to win in these states and, as the report indicated, to win specifically in these “factory towns.” This report should change the way we think about how elections are won and lost in these states.
The report suggests that in addition to the usual breakdown of urban, suburban and rural voting patterns, most of the change has occurred in two kinds of towns that do not really fit any of those categories, at least in the Great Lakes region and Midwest. Towns with fewer than 35,000 people in which manufacturing was once a principal source of employment are “small factory towns,” and those with more than 35,000 but not attached to a large metropolitan area are the “midsized factory towns.”
Sit down before you go on because the next statistic should knock you off your feet. The report examined seven swing states — Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and two more partisan states — Illinois and Indiana — as well as 48 counties in upstate New York. Those who live in the “factory towns” account for 46% of the electorate in those states. And, between 2012 and 2020, while Democrats were increasing their margins in the urban and suburban areas of the Midwest by some 540,929 and 506,448 votes respectively, in the midsized manufacturing towns the Democrats lost 766,578 and in the small factory towns they lost a stunning 1,868,210.
Both sets of factory town counties, the small and the midsized, accounted for more Democratic losses than the rural areas of these 10 states, which saw 557,206 net decreases for the Democrats. These are hard numbers of actual votes, not polls.
The relationship between manufacturing job losses and changes in political loyalty were pronounced in these factory towns because their economies were less diverse, less able to provide employment alternatives to the manufacturing jobs that went overseas.
The shifts were dramatic. In Trumbull County in Ohio, which lost 68% of its manufacturing jobs between 2001 and 2019, the shift in Democratic vote share from 2012 to 2020 was -17%. Manitowoc County in Wisconsin saw a 22% manufacturing job loss over the same period, and the shift in Democratic vote share was -10%. Luzerne County in Pennsylvania, which I have been writing about since 2008, lost 28% of its manufacturing jobs, the most of any county in Pennsylvania, and it swung 10 points to the GOP.
Trump was not lying when he said these workers were forgotten, he was just lying when he said he would do something about it. ”
—
The U.S. consumer price inflation reflects its dependence on other countries. Import prices are up, and cannot go down, but wages are going down.
Michael Hudson: The inflation is global, not stemming from the United States. The U.S. consumer price inflation reflects its dependence on other countries. Import prices are up, not only because of port congestion and supply shortages, but because of global energy prices and the fracturing of world trade into dollar-using and dollar-avoiding economies.
———–
Biden did nothing except to try to fool the public with the chips act, which i predicted was doomed to failure. most people do not know that once in office, biden lowered tariffs, only to quickly find out what a mistake that was, import prices were eating us alive, and still are today.
FDR knew that tariffs alone were not enough, he had the examples of lincoln to fall on, and of course ben franklins writings.
FDR actually raised tariffs higher than smoot-hawley. but knew that tariffs alone were not enough, and that was the reasoning behind the new deal, and it worked.
otherwise were was the highly educated motivated skilled labor was going to come from. the idiot biden and his cabinet were all clintonites, they hated labor.
so he not only raised tariffs higher than trump, he expanded them. today the fascist supreme court struct down tariffs, even though they are enshrined if the constitution. time to sideline those monsters.
without tariffs, nothing you do will matter, china does not free trade, and will eat america alive till nothing is left. just as smith, marx and franklin wrote about.
“As president-elect Biden assembles his cabinet and prepares to take
power, President Trump, while more-or-less conceding without
conceding, is planning his next act. One way or the other, the almost
74 million people who voted for him will continue to be a base of
support both for Trump and future rightwing demagogues.
That is, unless the Biden administration actually deals with the vast
inequality that has developed over decades, much of it during the
Clinton and Obama administrations. Of course, we shouldn’t overlook
the Bush-Cheney gang that let loose the dogs of Wall Street in an
unprecedented fashion. But Trump and the current incarnation of the
Republican Party, has found a way to distance themselves from the
economic mess left by Bush.”
————
so what did the smooth talking con man obama do, tried to push even more free trade on us.
———-
its the policies stupid: The Democratic Party helped to create today’s shockingly disillusioned and sullen public
the Democratic Party has also cleared the way for the greatest concentration of economic power in a century.
a large chunk of whom are now marching for Donald Trump.
yes the american revolution was a revolt against free trade
Clinton stripped antitrust out of the Democratic platform; it was the first time a reference to monopoly power was not in the platform since 1880.
free trade, deregulation, and balanced budgets would animate Clinton’s political economy, with high-tech and finance leading the way.
bill clintons economy was not structural, it was a illusion
FDR would not be surprised at all by the rise of trump. FDR even said its the policies stupid
“Competition policy was also a powerful political strategy. Democrats lost the U.S. House of Representatives just twice between 1930 and 1994. To get a sense of how rural Democrats used to relate to voters, one need only pick up an old flyer from the Patman archives in Texas: “Here Is What Our Democratic Party Has Given Us” was the title. There were no fancy slogans or focus-grouped logos. Each item listed is a solid thing that was relevant to the lives of conservative white Southern voters in rural Texas: Electricity. Telephone. Roads. Social Security. Soil conservation. Price supports. Foreclosure prevention. ”
“Clinton stripped antitrust out of the Democratic platform; it was the first time a reference to monopoly power was not in the platform since 1880. ”
“At the end of his presidency, Clinton explained his success. He praised Greenspan’s stewardship of the Federal Reserve. He said that the key to noninflationary growth was ensuring that workers did not demand raises beyond the rate of productivity, while unleashing businesses to pursue the most profitable lines of investment through deregulation and globalization.
He implicitly touted the theory of capital shortage: Inflation resulted from overregulation and deficits, which took money out of the hands of businesses. Putting money and power back into the hands of businesses with deregulation and a balanced budget led to low interest rates, massive corporate profits, productivity growth, and broad prosperity. Bork and Thurow, in other words, were right. ”
“From telecommunications to media to oil to banking to trade, Clinton administration officials—believing that technology and market forces alone would disrupt monopolies—ended up massively concentrating power in the corporate sector. They did this through active policy, repealing Glass-Steagall, expanding trade through NAFTA, and welcoming China’s entrance into the global-trading order via the World Trade Organization.
But corporate concentration also occurred in less-examined ways, like through the Supreme Court and defense procurement. Clinton Library papers, for example, reveal that the lone Senate objection to the Supreme Court nominations of both Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg was from a lurking populist Ohio Democrat, Howard Metzenbaum, who opposed the future justices’ general agreement with Bork on competition policy.
And in response to the end of the Cold War, the administration restructured the defense industry, shrinking the number of prime defense contractors from 107 to five. The new defense-industrial base, now concentrated in the hands of a few executives, stopped subsidizing key industries. The electronics industry was soon offshored. ”
“Despite this prosperity, in 2000, the American people didn’t reward the Democrats with majorities in Congress or an Oval Office victory. In particular, the rural parts of the country in the South, which had been a traditional area of Democratic strength up until the 1970s, were strongly opposed to this new Democratic Party. And white working-class people, whom Dutton had dismissed, did not perceive the benefits of the “greatest economy ever.” They also began to die. Starting in 1998 and continuing to this day, the mortality rate among white Americans, specifically those without a high school-degree, has been on the rise—leaving them scared and alienated.
Old problems also reemerged. Financial crises unseen since the 1920s began breaking out across the world, from Mexico to East Asia, prompted by “hot-money” flows.
Deflation, rather than inflation, and a capital glut, rather than a capital shortage, started to concern policymakers. And it turns out, according to a McKinsey study, that a disproportionately large amount of the productivity gains from the remarkable computerization of the economy were the result of just one company: Walmart, the new A&P. The mega store’s economic influence “reached levels not seen by a single company since the 19th-century.”
The gains of the 1990s, it turns out, were not structural, but illusory. Early in Bush’s term, the stock-market bubble burst and wages collapsed. A few years later, a global banking crisis, induced by a financial sector that had steadily gained power for 40 years, erupted. Concentration of power in the private sector, it turned out, had its downsides. ”
“Dealing with a financial collapse in the early years of his administration, Obama’s political-economic framework supported concentrated yet regulated financial power. From 2009 to 2010, the administration prioritized the stability of a concentrated financial system over risking an attempt to end the foreclosure wave threatening the American housing market.
In the last seven years, another massive merger boom has occurred, with concentrations accruing in the hospital, airline, telecommunications, and technology industries. Progressive corporations like Google are key pillars of a cosmopolitan liberal culture. This is the world of the Watergate Babies and the libertarian and statist thinkers who shaped their intellectual understanding of it. ”
—————–
the clintonites are still calling the 200 counties that voted blue for decades, even voted twice for americas first black president, stupid, bigots, racists, bolt 2 things together deplorable, insults daily, trump leads in 7 must win states.
—
Approximately 200 counties that voted for Barack Obama in 2012 shifted their support to Donald Trump in 2016. This trend was particularly noted in key swing states in the Midwest, where many of these counties had significant white, working-class populations.
Wikipedia
In the 2016 presidential election, approximately 200 counties that had supported Barack Obama in 2012 switched their allegiance to Donald Trump. This shift was particularly significant in key swing states across the Midwest.
Counties Involved: Over 200 counties flipped from Obama to Trump.
Demographic Trends: Many of these counties had substantial white, working-class populations.
Notable Example: Howard County in Northern Iowa was the largest pivot county, changing by 41 percentage points.
This transition in voter support highlights a broader trend where certain demographics, particularly in economically distressed areas, moved away from traditional Democratic support towards the Republican candidate. This change played a crucial role in the election outcomes in several key states.
BBC Wikipedia
——-
so what did biden do to break from clintonism, which he was a primary supporter of, why start a war with the russian super power, and support genocide. a stupid chips act stunt, doomed because there was no new deal to provide the needed infrastructure for labor, and corral capitalism.
so why would anyone call voters dumb for voting for trump? i would call them desperate.
I also feel a bit like that. We’re being systematically and effectively atomized and neutered while kept in protean, adaptable, flimsy bubbles for props.
I can only point you to marevilous Earth-666 and it happens to be under our own feet. FortUNately, Earth-666 doesn’t only comprise the Anthroposphere even though most of us tend to think it does.
‘Looking back over my own time in history, I realize that this state of affairs was emergent already thirty and forty years ago. It surfaced, though I did not recognize it at first, when political culture went to abstract demographic categories. “Asian-American” not Italian-Anerican — categories like Hispanic or LGBTQ+ that don’t share an actual cultural experience, only synthesized, generic narratives.’
Indeed.
LatinX!
None of these terms and identifiers (dividers?) were initially congruent with the underlying reality they were superimposed over but the goal, I believe, is to change peoples’ and cultuires’ own idea of themselves in the interest of the global machine.
I found Naqoiqatsi once on line and watched it. It was shorter than the others and was very unpleasant to watch. I mean physically unpleasant and irritating. But maybe that was the stealthy point.
According to China-based commetator Arnaud Bertrand, Xi Jinping in his recent book admits that ‘oversight of the Communist Party by “the judiciary, the public, and the media” was not just something the Party must “readily accept,” but something that he framed as historically decisive – an essential component to “escaping the historical cycle of rise and fall” that has doomed every dynasty in China’s history.’
It seems that Xi is more aware than some Western admirers that authoritarian Confucianism is not the last cry. It has failed many times before and will likely do so again. At least he is ready to discuss it, and try to find something better.
When I was a little child, my mother taught me to “not hit back, never hit back. If a bully bullies you, it is just his way of saying hello”. That remains a grievance and a bitter memory I have to this day. I am sure she meant well at the Toxic Pacifism eye-diddy-ological level. But it had the bad results which any normal human could predict.
Now, since these videos are constantly and consistently mis-titled, I don’t know for sure if this is a passive-aggressive sweetness-and-light Stealth White Supremacist mother trying to make the world safe for the White Super-Predator children she hopes to raise as White Super-Predator children. She could in all innocence be an Ethical Subhumanist Pacifist Sub-human teaching her children to be Ethical Subhumanist Pacifists like herself.
But the first responder featured to this White mother is replying as if the White mother is indeed choice number one.
I remember a college classmate telling me once about something his mother instructed him to do. It appears the class bully was bullying him and hit him just for fun. He tells me that she told him to hide a baseball bat behind his back, approach the bully kid with a hand out to “shake hands and make friends”. And as soon as the bully kid had begun the handshaking process, to take out the baseball bat and hit the bully kid as hard as possible with it. He did, and it worked. I wish I had been raised in that spirit.
Dan Kelley, I never took you for a Gingrich guy or a White Nationalist. I will read your stuff more critically in the future. I denounced LatinX, complete bullshit and I have the right to say it. What do you know about the topic?
Do you queer bash too, or did you when younger? Just curios, please share.
Dismissing entire amorphous groups with cheap, sloppy stereotypes, sad.
Also wasn’t it bruce wilder who tried (mistakenly) to justify the Alex Pretti murder by ICE since “He kicked out a taillight on a cop car previously?” Completely false; he picked up a woman that ICE agent Cowards had thrown on the ground, he died for being a gentleman when also legal-carrying a gun. The Trump thugs took some heat from their own people for this.
Well, I watched deeper into the video, and it turns out this White woman was indeed a teacher, and she was trying to teach Ethical Subhumanist Pacifist Subhumanism. And any number of people have said that they are not subhuman pacifists, and they will not teach their children to be subhuman pacifists.
The ” LatinX” spelling was invented by Academic Intellectual Lords of Political Correctness as a loyalty-test and reveal of who would be Wokel enough to use it and who would not be. I remember some LatinO spokesfolk themselves saying they did not invent it, they did not ask for it, and they do not like it.
I have thought of 2 ways to satirize it if it still has enough presence to where it still needs satirization.
” ‘LatinX’ , eh? Is that ‘Latinxo’ or ‘Latinxa’ ” ?
Or one could apply the same nu-spelling to other LatinX related words and concepts . . . . ChicanX, MejicanX, CubanX, etc.
Best comment prize to mago. Dan Kelley, one monkey don’t stop no show! “I don’t know about Pretti and ICE. That happened a longish time ago, and you haven’t spent a few minutes to learn the truth” Got it!!
To be hated by a fellow Irishman, 25% more than anything, because i am also Spanish, and briefly gay, you’re lazy, that’s on you not on me. May the road rise up to meet you!!
Viva, IanWelsh.com, to speak your truth and not be beaten down by trolls.
Thank you for the links. Unfortunately, since I stubbornly refuse to sign up for any type of Google account, they will remain unaccessible to me. I tried creating an account with a fake name and a fake email address, but their access-code can’t be sent to a fake email address which doesn’t even exist . . . which is only fair.
Oh well . . . I tried. If/when I can figure out how to create a dummy email account under a cut-out name, then I will try to sign up for this Google service that way, so I have a “real” fake email to which their access code can actually be sent.
‘To be hated by a fellow Irishman, 25% more than anything, because i am also Spanish, and briefly gay, you’re lazy, that’s on you not on me. May the road rise up to meet you!!’
Geez Mark, I love you man.
I just don’t think the more recent ‘LGBT…X’ has anything to do with ‘the original’ and while I would never angrily tear down a rainbow flag like an idiot…
…I nevertheless am sick of seeing churches and municipal spaces and the like with rainbow flags saying ‘WEEEEEEE Everybody Welcome!!!!!!’ when you know damn well that if you or I were to set up a grill and some tents and say we’re going to start feeding people and providing some safe shelter space….well, again, I don’t have to tell you how quickly ‘Everyone Welcome’ will devolve into idiocy.
Having to ask ‘What are your pronouns’ before one can even enter into a conversation?
It’s insulting to my indigenous nature. My inner animist recognizes it immediately as BS.
I think the branding of LGBT..X is insulting to the non-entirely-‘hetero’-population of which I might consider myself if I were even that ‘concerned’ with my own sexual desires which lean much more towards the vagina end of the spectrum but again, who really cares?!
Oh yeah: I hate motherfucking ICE and I know damn well what they did to Pretti.
These are your words:
‘Also wasn’t it bruce wilder who tried (mistakenly) to justify the Alex Pretti murder by ICE since “He kicked out a taillight on a cop car previously?”
I replied that I don’t know what bruce said about that because I don’t and that somehow morphed into your accusing me of not knowing about Pretti and ICE!
Are you on drugs Mark?
I don’t care. I just ‘sense’ it through the screen.
Some speed?
Or just a lot of caffeine? I drink expresso roast and smoke pot and it’s like a ‘light’ speedball or something.
No more hard stuff for me Mr Level.
Anyway, I imagine I’ll be out at Delaney Hall again soon if I can afford to get up there.
The Revolutionary Workers League has become BAMN! in keeping with the tenor of things these days I suppose.
Late to the party. But with all this talk about Godfrey Reggio’s films, and no mention of his cinematographer’s magnum opus, “Samsara,” I might have something germane to the discussion. This link is for the official trailer, via YT.
“Koyaanisqatsi” was life-changing for me, and in my opinion the cultural quilt laid out before the viewer in Samsara is second to none. Check out “Baraka” as well, if you’re a completionist.
Dan Kelly, I 100% share your contempt for the Lawn Sign Poseur Libs, “This household welcomes ALL,” these people wouldn’t materially help anyone below them in the Pecking order, just mutter meaningless worlds. I’d bet they wouldn’t even give a fiver to a homeless person. When I lived in Duluth, lotsa homeless, I would always give the Native People, esp. the older ones some money. More selective with white people, they don’t have the excessive racism holding them down reason for being poor. At least we agree on something.
Glad you hate ICE too; your buddy bruce professed that the Pretti killing planned, no evidence. He did kick out the taillight of an ICE Paddy Wagon on camera though. wilder seemed to me to be saying if someone destroys a taillight of ICE and picks a woman up off the ground he deserved the death penalty. I find that abhorrent.
No, I’m not on “Speed”, tried that fewer than a half-dozen times in my 20s and 30s, never since, don’t like downers either, or any Rx palliatives. Once when I was super-stressed as there was a drive to fire me from my job based on my union activism, my coworker gave me 2 Xanax she had a prescription for, I’d been getting about 3 hours a night of sleep, a huge help to me, and the fabricated case to come after me melted into thin air. Now I did enjoy MMDA, “Molly” when younger, years since I’ve seen that.
I did ALL CAPS signaling Sarcasm, S/, at the hysteria of the racism of the Gingrich crowd, ooh, somebody has a Hyphenated Identity, they’re UnAmerican, deport them immediately!! Maybe Bruce didn’t realize that Stephen Miller hasn’t died, and he did not inherit the Post of Racial Purity Overseer. So sad!!
Just because a group is large and amorphous, if bruce has no identification with or no friends or coworkers in that group, he has no right to come along and say, “You’re identity is pathetic, you’re a piece of shit”, which is what he did to me in the 2 areas I cited, brief sexual “deviancy” (a great athlete is a deviant, they can perform at higher levels than the ordinary or mean) and Latino-Identified more than white, he has no authority to tell us we don’t exist, or should self-deport (though I am planning to), that’s our choice, not his.
Bigots and bigotry are not appealing imo. It’s really that simple. I hope you’d agree with that too, but here the They Might Be Giants song “You and your racist friend” applies.
Oh, and to mago, sorry for doing what dan did to me, misinterpreting Sarc for seriousness. Catching tone in internet exchanges tougher than f2f.
Thank you for this. I went to see Baraka several times before it too disappeared from the movie theater lineup. It is Reggio cinematography, but not Phillip Glass music. I had never even heard of Samsara. I will have to take a look.
And if you are a completely complete completionist, there was also the super-short tossoff-afterthought film by Reggio and Glass called Anima Mundi. I went to see it.
The only disappointing thing about it is that it was so short and after-thoughty rather than as big and complete and impactful as ” Koya/Powa” had been. It could take some effort to find the whole thing on You Tube and I don’t have the time right now just before work.
( Could today’s younger digitalized generations who have been raised on 1-3 second super fast video cuts even bear to sit still long enough to follow the sedate slow-building pace of these high-classical analog movies?)
I’m here to do a new post, have to add a detail omitted to post about my dumb MD above. I brought up cannabis and its health benefits as a kind of IQ Test for him, loser failed completely.
I could’ve asked him, in 1865, who was the most powerful person in the world? Moron probably would’ve guessed Abe Lincoln or something, but no– Correct answer would’ve been Queen Victoria. Ruler of various national dynasties through cousins, grandchildren etc. The Russian Czar, German Chancellor Bismark, etc. etc. They’d all fall out by starting WW I after her death, obviously, fight to be Big Dog, One King over All.
Her crack medical team, best in the world, treated her Menstrual Cramps with Cannabis tinctures when young, and her other maladies were treated with laudanum in liquid form, which even the bourgeois had access to. The Caterpillar smoking a hookah atop a Mushroom isn’t because Lewis Carroll foresaw the Hippies’ rise much later, it was a commentary on the prevalence of Legal Dope.
I didn’t convey any of this to him, not worth the breath it would’ve taken. Like talking to a Wall, no new ideas could penetrate his locked-up brain. On the quiet road down to death.
But what I wanted to share was Fat, Needy Mussolini 3 per the AP, his “Celebrations” of US’s Glorious 250th failing from the get-go, since everyone knows he’s running the Country and the World down into a Ditch as deep an Magma-heated as Hell itself.
Heckuva Job, Diaper Donnie!! Amerikka is “hot, hot,” as hot as the Earth’s core, and as unsustainable to Life. At least we peons have schadenfreude. Circuses galore, but soon no bread.
different clue
Header: garden report
My corn seeds still haven’t come up after a week. If they are not emerging by Monday, I will give up and do something else there.
Potatoes are growing. Some sort of viny and floppy, some single-stem standing straight up.
different clue
For some reason my memory handed me a rocknroll song from decades ago, the saddest rocknroll song I ever heard. Luckily, it turns out to have been famous enough that You Tube has it. So here it is.
Sylvia’s Mother, from Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfVaommgPLU
mago
Hey dc, wondering if that strange late March heatwave hit your region. Here the plant world got confused and flowered and sprouted too early then got hit with subsequent seasonal frost and low temperatures. It messed up the normal bloom and growth cycle.
Ah, it’s all out of whack these days. What’s the name of that movie that Philip Glass did the soundtrack for back in the 80’s? Some Hopi word meaning out of balance as far as I can remember.
different clue
From the damnthatsinteresting subreddit, the animated NASA climate spiral visualization.
“The NASA climate spiral visualization”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1ugq80x/the_nasa_climate_spiral_visualization/
different clue
@mago,
That’s a good question. When I have a chunk of quiet time I will try letting memories bubble up to the surface of my brain and see what I am presented with. ( I suppose one could say that means that it can’t have been so bad so as to stand out in my memory without my even having to think about it). So I will try coming up with my best answer if I even can.
Separately,
Here is an interestingasfuck subreddit item called ” Pineapples! Who knew! ”
Showing the surprising flame-heat resistance of pineapples.
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1uh2zwg/pineapples_who_knew/
This could be very valuable for designing fire/heat resistant surfaces.
Okay. I’ll stop now for a while.
Roy Not a Boy
The corporate power in this shitty country is unbelievable!! So I attempted to make a purchase at an “Adult” website today, $10 and a few cents, not throwing away the money.
So I couldn’t complete it. I called my Credit Union, they didn’t block me, the fucking Visa Corporation did. Those motherfuckers who get people, including students and teenagers deeply indebted, and extort $1,000s or tens of thousands from them over years. Some may end up homeless, lives ruined. These Assholes have deputized themselves as the Guardian/Overseers of Card holders Moral Turpitude? Who gave them the right?
Just talked to a buddy, he and his mom made purchases on the same day of food, blocked, no notice, wtf?
This country has its goddamn head up its ass. You can legally smoke tobacco, dumb in my estimation, but not in public. I once lived in an apartment where the Property manager was Ex-Military, I lived in a state where Cannabis had been legal for 2 decades or so, he thought he smelt something in the Hall one day, he went around 2 floors of the building putting up signs, announcing a formal Inspection of tenants’ apartments in a one-day time window. I was working when the Inspection happened, nothing discovered. The Managers’ rationale– “There’s a pregnant woman on one of these 2 floors”, guess he thought if a few fragments of cannabis smoke were smelled in the hall she’d have a 3-headed baby or something.
I had an MD once who was an utter fucking moron, but arrogant like they are, “I went thru Med school, I’m 600x better than you. Wouldn’t listen, they can’t be bothered. Highly prejudiced. I was living in a new state where cannabis was legal, but insanely regulated, you had to get like a $150 MD Exam, if you were at Death’s Door you would get a card, if not, 45/55% odds you’d have just thrown the $$$ away and got nothing.
If you got the card, you’d get a “discount” but still pay through the nose for access, stuff nearly worth its weight in gold. I went black market, buddy with the card would buy for me, I’d buy him a drink or 2 as thanks.
Once somebody in my part of the hall smelled weed, reported it to our property manager. He contacted me and others in the Hall. He asked about my “use”, possible, actually he was a mellow and decent guy, I told him I don’t bother (I’d often smoke outside) but did report to him truthfully that about 2 weeks before I’d walked out one morning about 7:30 and smelled the Best Weed in the hall, somebody was Waking & Baking. Which I haven’t done since age 20. My youngest brother is a basket case, when our dad was near death I observed him doing this, just pathetic.
Ethan did his investigation someone got into the building and smoked in the Stairwell area, “crime” resolved, no tenants implicated. I was pretty sure I knew who did the misreport, there was an Autistic guy on our floor who I always saw coming in and out with his dog, he would never make eye contact or say hello, only when surprised, like opening a door suddenly and step into someone’s intimate space, then he’d acknowledge your existence and be polite. This guy got elected to the City Council later, I think he had a lot of money, I can’t imagine he had many friends. Once I was outside talking to a mutual friend, he came out, had to acknowledge her, then me too, wow, imagine practicing basic politeness!! But the voters went for this clown!!
Not sure if the link works, see William S. Burroughs Thanksgiving Prayer of 1986, “thanks for a nation of finks”, for a country where Nobody Can Mind their own business. America baby, it’s Hot, Hot!! Says the President, the envy of all.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=william+s.+burroughs+thanksgiving+prayer+video&t=newext&atb=v537-6&ia=videos&iax=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Ds4nSxArk9g8
Mark Level
Want to know why “Voters” in a “Democracy” often choose stoopid? It explains the psychology and optics of selecting the Worst, Titanic Captain types.
Think W Bush Junior (& exclude nepotism, not in the mix here). 4,200 years ago Plato laid the whole thing out, when he was in the Smart mode setting, not his Fascist stage.
Worthwhile philosophy YTube explains it here– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gPhzTkh3F0
This is why dogshit Kamala never had a ghost of a chance against Strongman Billionaire DJT. And the masses learn little, if anything– How many WMD bullshit scares we’ve had since 9/11?
But yes, the New York City voters learned something in the last 2 years, as was covered in another thread. Supporting Genocide and Mass Murder of Civilians is gross. Only one fool on her even disputed that, a big Susan Collins-Stan.
They address the Elitism charge here, too.
Egoculexegonos
@mago
Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi for “unbalanced life”). Unless you mean Powaqatsi…
Egoculexegonos
*Powaqqatsi
Or maybe you meant the last one? Naqoyqatsi
Header: conservatory balcony report
Last Wednesday, most of my healthy epiphyth orchid flowers suddenly shriveled overnight after two days of 39-40 degrees C. The previous end of May had been heat stressful too but this was unexpectedly fast. Interestingly, the terminal individual flowers of each stem are perfectly healthy. The oldest leaves are also slowly shriveling… Sap being sucked up back inside. Amazing survival strategy.
This year heatwaves here (north central Spain) have started more than one year earlier. Little after covid they have become more common and longer. At the end of summer concrete buildings have sucked in so much heat that they become slow cookers.
Egoculexegonos
Mistake: I meant “heatwaves here have started more than one MONTH earlier”, not a year. Sorry.
mago
Wow, thanks Ecoulexegonos commenting from north Central Spain. Sounds like Barcelona, but maybe more like Basque Country? (I lived in Andalucía once upon a time.) I hear Spain is melting in the heat.
Anyway, yeah, it’s Koyaanisqatsi. How erudite of you.
I much appreciate the commentariat here with their intelligence and insights.
Thanks and blessings to all.
Stay cool, stay fresh, and stay away from the haters.
different clue
Several years ago someone left a link to a no-commercial-interruptions offering of the entire Koyanisqaatsi movie on one of this blog’s threads. It may still be there, findable with a long enough brute-force thread-by-thread search.
And if found, would the link still be good? Or rotted?
Dan Kelly
‘Several years ago someone left a link to a no-commercial-interruptions offering of the entire Koyanisqaatsi movie…’
https://tubitv.com/movies/302693/koyaanisqatsi
bruce wilder
In my youth and middle-age, I lived in a mass communication society and I had a sense from my own consumption of broadcast media, public schooling and a mass-produced culture, what other people (outside my personal acquaintance) thought about events of public concern.
I know that world went away quite some time ago, but for some reason, I recently started to worry about the implications of this state of affairs. Both that I have no firm idea what is on other people’s playlists, so to speak, but also that I suspect most people have only a limited sense of sharing their life and times as part of nested communities and cultures. I don’t mean that people have lost their general feeling of being part of humanity or various subdivisions thereof. What I am saying is that, while still feeling embedded, most people now lack access to any detailed content that they know to be widely experienced in common within their subdivision(s) of humanity.
Looking back over my own time in history, I realize that this state of affairs was emergent already thirty and forty years ago. It surfaced, though I did not recognize it at first, when political culture went to abstract demographic categories. “Asian-American” not Italian-Anerican — categories like Hispanic or LGBTQ+ that don’t share an actual cultural experience, only synthesized, generic narratives.
It came home to me very recently, because I refocused my doom-scrolling partly to Substack, giving up TikTok and X-twitter, toxic addictions that they are. Though they are tailored, indeed curated experiences motivated by the targeting imperatives of commercial and political propaganda, both those platforms work at giving the impression they are hosting a townsquare. You seem part of a larger audience laughing or applauding together, informed and entertained together. News of storms or disasters, celebrity happenings and great were broadcast, seemingly — I was notified. I got to see video of the boom going boom.
My Substack, for some inexplicable reason, has veered off suddenly from liberal chattering-class verbosity in a decidedly conservative direction. “Mamdani is a communist” kind of thing. And, I cannot tell if the algorithm is messing up or maybe there is a shifting mood in the country.
All of a sudden, I am aware that where I might once have had opinions, I now subscribe to narratives that get me admitted to particular, familiar echo chambers. And, if I am confronted with someone enveloped by a narrative I thought “everyone” was ready to reject, I am not sure how to respond. Or, if I should respond? Should I invite him into my echo chamber and point out my collection of dusty facts he has never before seen or appreciated?
On some political subjects where I update my data frequently but my priors not at all — Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, Russia v Ukraine, the fecklessness of the Dem establishment — I find it incredible in a way that some rando on the internet hasn’t got the memos sent to me. I cannot even enjoy the prospect of arguing, because I can already tell this other person is not even sharing the same plane of reality with me and hasn’t been for some time.
I see myself in these Others I encounter. Part of the problem is that I am consuming a pre-digested stream where all the data — the inconvenient facts and complications, balanced genuinely expert opinion — that might prompt critical thinking in contradiction to the fit my preferred narrative seems to have has been filtered out. Apparently, that may be happening to almost everyone!
Can someone point me to Earth-616, please.
different clue
@mago,
I have given my memory time to sit and simmer for a while and I don’t remember any unusual heat-waves just this last March. I dimly remember some days approaching 70 but I would have to look at weather data to see if that is a false memory. And near 70 now and then in March is reliably occasional . . . every few years I think.
Somewhere between 8 and 12 years ago we had some days approaching 90 in March and at least one day over 90 itself. I don’t remember what year exactly, but I remember the event very well.
We have been getting warmer-in-general winters ( but with occasional subzero polar outbreaks), and the snow we have been getting is more and more the heavy wet kind, not the dry-type powder we used to expect from deeply winter snowstorms.
Our plants were springing up somewhat earlier this year than they used to do in the past, but not as badly as they have in some recent years. Forsythia should normally bloom sometime in early to mid April and lilacs should bloom sometime in early to mid May. This year the Forsythia bloomed near normal time but the lilacs bloomed sooner than usual and the redbuds were blooming in mid-late April rather than early-mid May. Still, its not like it was in one recent year, where the Forsythia and lilacs bloomed at the same time.
different clue
@Dan Kelly,
Thank you for the Koyanisqaatsi link. I hope it still works.
different clue
Well, I see this tubity service jams commercials right into the movie just like you tube would and does. The link I remember from years ago did not do that. If that link was tubity itself, that means that tubity itseld has been a little bit degraded.
Oh well . . .
Egoculexegonos
Erudite? 😀 Not really. I was just quite interested both in Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi back in their time. I knew about Naqoyqatsi years later but didn’t have time to check it then and it eventually slipped out of my “mindmory” (I prefer “memorind”, tho). Btw, by clicking the TubiTV link I get “We’re Sorry. Tubi is the largest free movie and TV streaming service in the US. Unfortunately, we’re not currently available in your area.”
Indeed, Sportugalain, along with the rest of the Mediterranean areas, is starting to be a clear, literal hotspot in the last few years but you still keep hearing strange negationism in the legacy media and politicosphere (not so much when you talk to people). It seems, for example, that extreme heat gives character and inspiration to kids; also a politician (Marta Fernández) thinks kids nowadays are made out of butter because she clearly remembers that “when she was little girl she would often ride her bike outside in summer when it was 40ºC”. The Mediterranean sea, besides probably lately being turned in the biggest human cemetery in the world by homicidal Eurohypocrysy, is becoming a powerful heat pump in its shallowest areas with devastating submarine heatwaves and all.
Last night I came here with the idea of telegraphically posting a few things but got distracted by agrofacts. Some of the things I had in mind:
1) Michel Kuka Mboladinga has become a national sensation in Congo just by attending to worldcup maFIFA matches and systematically mimicking Patrice Lumumba’s statue. No news from Belgium, I guess. I’m truly amazed how some “simple” acts can reignite so much powerful information and help diseminate “stale/forgotten” relevant historical facts despite the Western silence.
2) Hondurasgate audios between ex-presidconvict Juan Orlando Hernández and current president Nasry Asfura clearly unveiled Operation Condor 2.0 and it seems to have worked in Honduras, Bolivia and to currently be working in Colombia. Mexico would be next. In Honduras, one week after the audios were published, an AI slop animation film (Copán: La leyenda) was released all over (even in schools) Honduras as an effective distraction. Surrealistic. Part of the “(panem et) circenses” strategy inaugurated by Berlusconi and followed by other professional clowns such as, among others, Trump, Zelenskyy and Milei… on second thoughts, it was maybe inaugurated by Reagan but it seems to me it was substantially different back then. That’s why Mboladinga’s strategy is being so radly successful (not so much in the West where it’s being perceived, I feel, as a distant, faint echo… just a curio).
Egoculexegonos
3) Cuba’s studies on HEBERSaVax, a promising vaccine which seems to be effective against some malignant cancer tumors, goes on despite USA’s blockade. It entered phase II clinical trials recently. It blocks targeted blood intake to tumors… Will it work? Will USA blockade work?
Mark Level
A typo by me on the Why voters choose shitty leaders post, Socrates 2,400 y.a., not 4,200, Exculgamos not the only one to need correcting.
Koyaanisqatsi a great film, as are the other 2. First saw it when it came out in the Theater, on a big screen, smoked a joint with a friend before entering, perfect way to see it and be blown away.
Recently I upgraded my phone to 5G, it was way overdue, I had a 2018 model that was pretty backward. Now I’m paying 3x as much per month, was only paying $42 prior, but it’s insured, and good. Here’s the other thing, don’t wanna do a commercial for them, but with Verizon when you go 5G you get YouTube Premium. On there I can get all kinds of great movies, media.
Going to recommend a really great Polish film from 1966, in black and white, but features Electronic Music (! In Poland in ’66, Theremin etc.), 3 hours, amazing cast, stories within stories, very exotic, freaky narrative, “The Saragossa Manuscript.” Based on Poland’s most highly regarded book, The Manuscript found in Saragossa. I got the whole film, easily.
The author, Jan Potocki, who late in life decided he was a werewolf, and killed himself with a single Silver bullet to the head, exoticized Spanish culture, as some have done to Arab/Muslim cultures, not the Orientalism that Edward Said warned of, but Hispanicism, the Spanish are extremely sensual, sexual, adventurous, ready to sword fight, great storytellers.
A young Walloon Guard soldier is trying to cross through the ghost and demon-haunted Sierra Morena (Dark Sierra) region en route to Madrid. His 2 Subalterns are variously superstitious and full of fear, or thieving, one will run off with his horse. After getting lost en route, he stops for the night at a haunted Inn, the couple that runs it are getting ready to leave as nightfall looms, “Nobody stays here at night, the demons and ghosts come out!” but leave him a small meal. He is inexperienced but arrogant, his family prominent, “I fear nothing, I’m staying.”
After they’re gone, a beautiful North African Mora women, with one bared breast showing emerges from a basement’s hidden door, carrying a small oil lamp (sign of enlightenment), “Senyor, I am the servant of 2 Moorish princesses who would like to invite you to dinner.” They descend to the basement, and a wonderful repast is laid out with not just food but wine, there are 2 beautiful women there. They tell Alfonso he is their distant cousin & they awaited him here for that reason. “Isn’t your mother a Gomelez, we are Gomelez too!” Yes.
They have never seen a man before, ensconced in a harem in N. Africa, they want to have sex with him to “continue our line”!! If it sounds too good to be true . . . So they do some lesbian kissy stuff to warm him up, soon he’s on the bed with them embracing. Pan out, we know it’s been consummated, 2x at least.
The next morning he wakes up alone, outside on the ground, the look of ecstasy on his face while sleeping evaporates when he opens his eyes, he has a noose around his neck (Masonic reference, Tom Waits has a song about this, “Walking Spanish Down the Hall”), final moments of life, luckily it broke when he was hung from a gibbet between 2 crusty-looking, evil Brigands who are dead. (Christ myth reference.)
The conflict between his own Christian faith and Islam will be core as he meets these women a couple times more on the road. He never advances far, can’t escape the dark wood, but meets a bunch of Allies, stock categories, a mathematician, an Alchemist and his beautiful sister, linked via horoscope, he is a Virgo, she is a Gemini (both signs ruled by Mercury), a Gypsy chief and his clan of horsemen all take refuge from the Inquisition which is pursuing Alfonso, somehow knows of his miscegenation with Moorish damas, in the Alchemist’s castle.
Now what is the Manuscript? Film very faithful to the nearly 400 pp. book. At the beginning, before departing, he was on the losing side in a battle of the Napoleonic Wars, took refuge in an empty house being hit with cannon fire, etc. Found a big, 8 inch thick book of Dali-style Hermetic art, a Crab (Cancer), 2 women in a lesbian embrace, Ladders and Masonic symbols, etc. One of his enemy troops come in, doesn’t attack, “What’s that book you have,” they take a break and share the book . . . Foreshadowing.
Alphonso briefly finds the same book in the Alchemists’ Castle when he’s left alone, then someone distracts him and a confederate steals it away again.
The cast becomes huge, vignettes from the past and future told, stories link to other stories as in the Decameron, etc. Later story shift to Madrid, a voyeur sleazebag, but very handsome is cultivating a nerdy little nobleman, going to set the Poetry-reading Noble up with a beautiful wife, but– the hitch is that she’s the daughter of his father’s greatest enemy!! A sword-fight nearly ensues, after Daddy breaks the Oaths he took and makes his son who he’d forced to take them do so too. A happy reconciliation and marriage follow.
English subtitles for the Polish dialogue. What word do Polish and Spanish have in common,? “Espada”, sword. (Swords in tarot are Air, Intellect, like the dagger.)
So there’s my teaser. Going to disagree strongly with bruce wilder. I’m aware of all of the pitfalls of Identity politics, it’s as often used to divide as unite, step carefully. See KT Chong, or the Banderist LAS.
“I did not recognize it at first, when political culture went to abstract demographic categories. “Asian-American” not Italian-Anerican (sic) — categories like Hispanic or LGBTQ+ that don’t share an actual cultural experience, only synthesized, generic narratives.” I call bullshit. No wonder the algorithm codes you as Republican.
I am Hispanic, white Hispanic now that I’m older, or Latino. “LatinX” a bullshit term of Glib Lib Dividers not uniters, teaching at a High School with a Spanish name and lema (motto), mascotas at athletic events, a Don and a Bull, “Adelante, siempre adelante,” the other Latino staff all thought LatinX pure cringe. That shit is gone, thankfully.
Newt Gingrinch (not sic) and his racist buddies back in the 80s campaigned on “NO HYPHENATED NAMES!!! THAT’S UNAMERICAN!! NO WIRE HANGERS!!” Once you’re here, you don’t speak Czech or Spanish or Greek, or Arabic, you assimilate and become a good, bland, Anglo-Saxon knock-off. “Multiculturalism= Death”, lack of patriotism, dual loyalty (except for ONE group allowed to trumpet their dual loyalty.) Fuck that.
USA would’ve been a shit culture 1,000x worse if we didn’t have Black People to create music with actual life in it, in the 50s Peggy Lee’s “How Much is that Doggy in the Window” top 10 on the radio. Nobody in their right minds would eat UK Jellied Eels (they have a right to if they want), Hispanic, Italian, Chinese food enhance quality of life. N’Awlins cuisine, raw ersters before having a shot of whisky at the bar, Po’ Boy Sandwiches, Shrimp Etoufee, Crawfish, “Suck the head, squeeze the tip.” No that’s not a sex technique (but could be) per the internet, it’s culinary.
Let 1,000 Flowers bloom!! Embrace what’s good from your own cultures (I’m made up of 5-6 known, at least, a Mutt like many Americans, grateful for it), and reject what is negative. Now as to your Hispanic take, you are flat wrong. Until I turned 58, other Latino people recognized I was Latino, even before I’d learned Spanish well during my 6 months crossing from Texas to Nicaragua and Costa Rica, then back across 5 different paises. I didn’t confirm that with a genetic test until age 52, but la sangre can be strong, people know when you share their culture and blood, intuition can be strong too.
I’m 89% white, Euro, only 11% non-white, and so grateful for it. White Nationalist Americans are pigs, I’ll quote DiffClue’s KlanMaga on that. But Libs vote for Lesser Evil so things only get worse.
A little tribute to Like and Subscribe here, I quoted “In Opposition There is True Friendship” recently. LAS thought I was lying and exaggerating about the annual Orgy in the Oakland OTO, Thelema Lodge on 63rd Street, when the Rights of Eleusis, 7 Rituals all 13 days apart, descending from Saturn to Jupiter to Mars to Sol to Venus to Mercury, culminating with Luna, at the end of Luna those who stayed could partake, or you could leave.
LAS claimed I lied when I shared that I was a bisexual slut, Morrisey corrupted me, for about 8 months when I was 25. Now this was immature in a way, maybe more than one way, but I had fun, twice the chance to get laid, as the Divine Oscar quipped. When you’re still young and attractive why wouldn’t you partake of the feast? Within 2 years I’d be reading the OTO upper degree, 7-9 degree papers, and learned to take my sexuality seriously, pick partners wisely and commit to the extent reasonable and possible. LAS’ teasing made me realize this, which I’d previously ignored, so a rare hat-tip to him.
I am not “a spokesman for the gay community” by any means, my fleeting experience does not qualify me. But Bruce Wilder 100% wrong that it’s not a shared identity, for the very obvious reason of Safety and not getting your head bashed in by sexually insecure homophobes. Beyond that, there is genuine gay culture, Mapplethorpe photos, Tom of Finland, Stanton Archives’ BDSM 50s stuff, Lipstick Lesbian films, Todd Haynes’ directed “Carol”, young Mara Rooney rejects the lame boyfriend for sex tutoring with Kate Blanchett, the Kate character’s raging husband tries to take their daughter away, it’s the uptight mid-50s. Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine thinly veiled romance between studly, hugely-hung Iggy Pop, and the more fey, androgynous, makeup wearing David Bowie stand-ins, Science Fiction Easter Egg, Alien Craft bought a magick ring to earth, passed between gay men and the occasional woman, it gives you incredible glamour, you can be a Pop Star and fuck nearly everyone you want, while dressing exquisitely (not Iggy though, a caveman) per Baudelaire’s Injunction about the necessity for Artificiality, it makes us Human. The Kinks’ “Lola”!! Kinky.
Rooney Mara not typecast easily, in The Girl Who Kicked the Dragon’s Nest, she’s a sinister Goth Hacker and spy, under state control of a rapist, but gets her revenge in full.
Sexuality is a gift, FFS, enjoy it as long as you have it. Other queer people recognized me as queer-adjacent even when I’d quit being Bi–, there was an attendant at the California Cannabis Club I’d buy at, I was wearing an Aqua Blue-Green shirt, she gave me the warmest smile, “One of Us.” Now my jape at “As a spokesman for the gay community” was directed at a former coworker, widely despised for her insincerity and posturing by many at our school. A cute, elfin little woman, Kaedan (kind of gender-queer name) within a year after joining the school had her 2nd kid, with a Dude, not artificial insemination, but wrote in the school paper in response to a student query, “As a spokeswoman for the gay community, I think . . . ” Barf!!
I partook of membership in the gay community for a bit, I’m not ashamed of that, it benefited more than harmed me, part of life’s rich pageant, but I will never be “a spokesman” for it; it is very diverse. But we deviants do sometimes recognize one another, it’s a Secret Club, you know your sistren and brethren when paths cross, lots of times, not always. Masons do the same thing, comic book nerds, Star-Trek nerds (never my thing), that’s sociology 101. The Gay Experience is shared, it is not isolated usually, nor hopefully alienated, only the in-the-closet losers do that.
I’m proud to speak Spanish fluently, recently accidentally shamed a young Gabacho at my bank, requested to withdraw $400, “I’m sorry sir, I don’t speak Spanish.” Your loss. Spanish speakers can talk to Italians with a large amount of comprehension, Brazilian Portuguese even closer.
In a hateful, alienated society, we need ligas, links to others within and across culture. YOLO not in the Christian sense, but get allies and friends while you can, Wo/Man is a naturally social animal. So bruce, I’m not surprised the internet codes you Right, based on your broad-brush denunciation of solidarity among “marginal” groups.
Going to close by saying something nice about Kaedan however. So in my school culture there were 2 divided groups of teachers, the Union Activists and Allies like myself, those with self-respect who wouldn’t be bullied, and the Suck-Ups, people who groveled for and thanked abusive Admin (not all admin were abusive, there were about 20% decent), Kaedan was in the latter group. But in addition to posturing as gay, she postured as Ultra-Left.
Now, the Jewish staff all considered me a fellow Jew, I was very honest and always on the fence about it, well, I’m Spanish so it’s possible, but it wasn’t in my 23&Me so I’m not claiming it. Kaeden and the many (not all but a high #) Jewish staff who were suck-ups got to run the boring, North Korean style “community building” (sic) Staff meetings we had twice monthly & got paid extra, we just got bored, one time she turned on her laptop and it had a large “Free Palestine” Banner on it. I smiled to see the barely-concealed rage on several people’s faces, good on K. Take allies when you can get ’em, reject the phonies when it’s obvious.
Phillip Allen
The UTube seems to have Koyaanisqatsi available for free and without commercials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOA_dOrm_Mk
Also Powaqqatsi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaSfzL1P49Q
YouTube has the third film, Naqoyqatsi, available, but not free.
mago
I was living in Costa Rica when twitter first came on line, and I signed up to share my thoughts on where I was and what I was doing. I composed exactly one tweet on noodle bowls and sent it to a friend. That was it. The great book of face was surging then, but I didn’t bite knowing that I’d get sucked in.
I don’t do much doom scrolling, but I try to keep up with affairs as I have since the pre internet years when Fred Flinstone lived down the street. I’ve grown a bit weary lately with the so called alt community and the various hobby horses. I stopped watching television when I was in college. I stopped reading newspapers long ago when they were still around. No mainstream publications on my reading list either. I don’t know what that makes me, and I don’t care.
I wanted to mention to Mark Level regarding a recent remark I made about don’t sugar coat it. Back in the day when someone went off on a rant, my response was invariably, don’t sugar coat it, tell us what you really think. So that’s where that came from.
Ah, well. Living that Chinese curse of interesting times. Trouble everywhere and the world has gone astray as Bob Marley said.
spud
kamala could not get elected, because the voters saw what she was, just another clintonite con artist, that has reduced america to a third world status. many trump voters actually voted for obama, only to find another defender of bill clintons disastrous polices.
import prices started to rise under obama, this was of course quite predictable. both smith and marx, as well as ben franklin predicted it.
—
Import prices in the U.S. began to rise significantly in 2015, with a notable increase in the Trade Weighted U.S. Dollar Index and various commodities contributing to this trend. The import price index saw an 8.3-percent decrease by the end of 2015, but subsequent years showed fluctuations with rising prices, particularly in fuel and lubricants.
bls.gov Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
Import prices in the U.S. have experienced significant fluctuations since 2015. The trends have been influenced by various economic factors, including changes in the Trade Weighted U.S. Dollar Index and commodity prices.
2015: Import prices saw an 8.3% decrease by the end of the year, marking a notable decline.
Post-2015: Following the decrease, import prices began to rise again, particularly driven by increases in fuel and lubricants.
Factors Influencing Import Prices
Year Import Price Change Key Influencing Factors
2015 -8.3% Decline in commodity prices
2016-2020 Fluctuations Variations in fuel prices and demand
2021-2026 Rising prices Increased demand and geopolitical factors
The rise in import prices, especially in fuel and lubricants, has been a significant trend in recent years, reflecting broader economic conditions and market dynamics.
Trading Economics Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
—————–
https://inthesetimes.com/article/democrats-electablity-heartland-midwest-factory-manufacturing-obama-trump-elections
“Democrats have an electability problem in America’s industrial heartland that could flip the Senate red for a decade to come.
An intervention seems necessary, and it should come not from the corporate Democrats who got us into this mess.
In a new study, “Factory Towns,” Iowa Democratic analyst Richard Martin examines the 853 counties of upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. He reports that 618 of these counties lost manufacturing jobs from 2001 to 2019.
Perhaps not coincidentally, between the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections, the 565 counties he designates “small and midsized manufacturing counties” saw a 2,635,000-vote net gain for GOP candidate Donald Trump. Add a 557,000 vote GOP gain from the 209 “rural counties” and that’s 3,192,000 votes in 2020 — which dwarfs the 1,188,000 Democratic-vote gain in the 79 “metro,” “college” and “suburban” counties from the study.
It’s likely that Trump won a significant number of votes in these economically anxious communities with promises to create factory jobs and to stand up to a Democratic elite that had shipped those jobs overseas (and was planning to again with the Trans-Pacific Partnership).
Recall how, in the 1990s, the Clintonites and their Democratic Leadership Council buddies rewarded the corporate donor class with NAFTA, leaving displaced factory workers behind. Martin reports that, in the 382 manufacturing counties where Trump votes grew, 496,000 factory jobs were lost from 2001 to 2019.
From 2010 to 2020, the United States lost 462,000 union members; 93% of that decline came in nine of the states studied (upstate New York data was not available).
In the past two decades, Democrats have sought to forge a governing majority by winning the support of various (and overlapping) Democratic-leaning demographic groups: Latinos, African Americans, the highly educated, suburban women, union members, LGBTQ people and the Left (always as the junior partner and never in charge). In 2008 and 2012, that strategy maintained enough working-class white voters in the Midwest to secure former President Barack Obama’s victory. In 2016, Democrats lost the Electoral College when Trump carried eight states Obama had won in 2008 including Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, swing states featured in “Factory Towns.” ”
——
https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/new-report-midwest-factory-towns-shakes-way-we-look-politics
“A very important think tank study was just issued and it is a must-read for everyone interested in politics. “Factory Towns,” a report from the organizations American Family Voices and 21st Century Democrats, examines where the Democrats have lost ground since the 2012 election in 10 Midwestern states.
Control of the White House and the Congress rests with the ability to win in these states and, as the report indicated, to win specifically in these “factory towns.” This report should change the way we think about how elections are won and lost in these states.
The report suggests that in addition to the usual breakdown of urban, suburban and rural voting patterns, most of the change has occurred in two kinds of towns that do not really fit any of those categories, at least in the Great Lakes region and Midwest. Towns with fewer than 35,000 people in which manufacturing was once a principal source of employment are “small factory towns,” and those with more than 35,000 but not attached to a large metropolitan area are the “midsized factory towns.”
Sit down before you go on because the next statistic should knock you off your feet. The report examined seven swing states — Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and two more partisan states — Illinois and Indiana — as well as 48 counties in upstate New York. Those who live in the “factory towns” account for 46% of the electorate in those states. And, between 2012 and 2020, while Democrats were increasing their margins in the urban and suburban areas of the Midwest by some 540,929 and 506,448 votes respectively, in the midsized manufacturing towns the Democrats lost 766,578 and in the small factory towns they lost a stunning 1,868,210.
Both sets of factory town counties, the small and the midsized, accounted for more Democratic losses than the rural areas of these 10 states, which saw 557,206 net decreases for the Democrats. These are hard numbers of actual votes, not polls.
The relationship between manufacturing job losses and changes in political loyalty were pronounced in these factory towns because their economies were less diverse, less able to provide employment alternatives to the manufacturing jobs that went overseas.
The shifts were dramatic. In Trumbull County in Ohio, which lost 68% of its manufacturing jobs between 2001 and 2019, the shift in Democratic vote share from 2012 to 2020 was -17%. Manitowoc County in Wisconsin saw a 22% manufacturing job loss over the same period, and the shift in Democratic vote share was -10%. Luzerne County in Pennsylvania, which I have been writing about since 2008, lost 28% of its manufacturing jobs, the most of any county in Pennsylvania, and it swung 10 points to the GOP.
Trump was not lying when he said these workers were forgotten, he was just lying when he said he would do something about it. ”
—
The U.S. consumer price inflation reflects its dependence on other countries. Import prices are up, and cannot go down, but wages are going down.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/01/the-saker-interviews-michael-hudson.html
Michael Hudson: The inflation is global, not stemming from the United States. The U.S. consumer price inflation reflects its dependence on other countries. Import prices are up, not only because of port congestion and supply shortages, but because of global energy prices and the fracturing of world trade into dollar-using and dollar-avoiding economies.
———–
Biden did nothing except to try to fool the public with the chips act, which i predicted was doomed to failure. most people do not know that once in office, biden lowered tariffs, only to quickly find out what a mistake that was, import prices were eating us alive, and still are today.
FDR knew that tariffs alone were not enough, he had the examples of lincoln to fall on, and of course ben franklins writings.
FDR actually raised tariffs higher than smoot-hawley. but knew that tariffs alone were not enough, and that was the reasoning behind the new deal, and it worked.
otherwise were was the highly educated motivated skilled labor was going to come from. the idiot biden and his cabinet were all clintonites, they hated labor.
so he not only raised tariffs higher than trump, he expanded them. today the fascist supreme court struct down tariffs, even though they are enshrined if the constitution. time to sideline those monsters.
without tariffs, nothing you do will matter, china does not free trade, and will eat america alive till nothing is left. just as smith, marx and franklin wrote about.
https://theanalysis.news/interviews/economic-issues-more-than-culture-wars-won-trump-74-million-votes-thomas-ferguson/
“As president-elect Biden assembles his cabinet and prepares to take
power, President Trump, while more-or-less conceding without
conceding, is planning his next act. One way or the other, the almost
74 million people who voted for him will continue to be a base of
support both for Trump and future rightwing demagogues.
That is, unless the Biden administration actually deals with the vast
inequality that has developed over decades, much of it during the
Clinton and Obama administrations. Of course, we shouldn’t overlook
the Bush-Cheney gang that let loose the dogs of Wall Street in an
unprecedented fashion. But Trump and the current incarnation of the
Republican Party, has found a way to distance themselves from the
economic mess left by Bush.”
————
so what did the smooth talking con man obama do, tried to push even more free trade on us.
———-
its the policies stupid: The Democratic Party helped to create today’s shockingly disillusioned and sullen public
the Democratic Party has also cleared the way for the greatest concentration of economic power in a century.
a large chunk of whom are now marching for Donald Trump.
yes the american revolution was a revolt against free trade
Clinton stripped antitrust out of the Democratic platform; it was the first time a reference to monopoly power was not in the platform since 1880.
free trade, deregulation, and balanced budgets would animate Clinton’s political economy, with high-tech and finance leading the way.
bill clintons economy was not structural, it was a illusion
FDR would not be surprised at all by the rise of trump. FDR even said its the policies stupid
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-democrats-killed-their-populist-soul/504710/
“Competition policy was also a powerful political strategy. Democrats lost the U.S. House of Representatives just twice between 1930 and 1994. To get a sense of how rural Democrats used to relate to voters, one need only pick up an old flyer from the Patman archives in Texas: “Here Is What Our Democratic Party Has Given Us” was the title. There were no fancy slogans or focus-grouped logos. Each item listed is a solid thing that was relevant to the lives of conservative white Southern voters in rural Texas: Electricity. Telephone. Roads. Social Security. Soil conservation. Price supports. Foreclosure prevention. ”
“Clinton stripped antitrust out of the Democratic platform; it was the first time a reference to monopoly power was not in the platform since 1880. ”
“At the end of his presidency, Clinton explained his success. He praised Greenspan’s stewardship of the Federal Reserve. He said that the key to noninflationary growth was ensuring that workers did not demand raises beyond the rate of productivity, while unleashing businesses to pursue the most profitable lines of investment through deregulation and globalization.
He implicitly touted the theory of capital shortage: Inflation resulted from overregulation and deficits, which took money out of the hands of businesses. Putting money and power back into the hands of businesses with deregulation and a balanced budget led to low interest rates, massive corporate profits, productivity growth, and broad prosperity. Bork and Thurow, in other words, were right. ”
“From telecommunications to media to oil to banking to trade, Clinton administration officials—believing that technology and market forces alone would disrupt monopolies—ended up massively concentrating power in the corporate sector. They did this through active policy, repealing Glass-Steagall, expanding trade through NAFTA, and welcoming China’s entrance into the global-trading order via the World Trade Organization.
But corporate concentration also occurred in less-examined ways, like through the Supreme Court and defense procurement. Clinton Library papers, for example, reveal that the lone Senate objection to the Supreme Court nominations of both Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg was from a lurking populist Ohio Democrat, Howard Metzenbaum, who opposed the future justices’ general agreement with Bork on competition policy.
And in response to the end of the Cold War, the administration restructured the defense industry, shrinking the number of prime defense contractors from 107 to five. The new defense-industrial base, now concentrated in the hands of a few executives, stopped subsidizing key industries. The electronics industry was soon offshored. ”
“Despite this prosperity, in 2000, the American people didn’t reward the Democrats with majorities in Congress or an Oval Office victory. In particular, the rural parts of the country in the South, which had been a traditional area of Democratic strength up until the 1970s, were strongly opposed to this new Democratic Party. And white working-class people, whom Dutton had dismissed, did not perceive the benefits of the “greatest economy ever.” They also began to die. Starting in 1998 and continuing to this day, the mortality rate among white Americans, specifically those without a high school-degree, has been on the rise—leaving them scared and alienated.
Old problems also reemerged. Financial crises unseen since the 1920s began breaking out across the world, from Mexico to East Asia, prompted by “hot-money” flows.
Deflation, rather than inflation, and a capital glut, rather than a capital shortage, started to concern policymakers. And it turns out, according to a McKinsey study, that a disproportionately large amount of the productivity gains from the remarkable computerization of the economy were the result of just one company: Walmart, the new A&P. The mega store’s economic influence “reached levels not seen by a single company since the 19th-century.”
The gains of the 1990s, it turns out, were not structural, but illusory. Early in Bush’s term, the stock-market bubble burst and wages collapsed. A few years later, a global banking crisis, induced by a financial sector that had steadily gained power for 40 years, erupted. Concentration of power in the private sector, it turned out, had its downsides. ”
“Dealing with a financial collapse in the early years of his administration, Obama’s political-economic framework supported concentrated yet regulated financial power. From 2009 to 2010, the administration prioritized the stability of a concentrated financial system over risking an attempt to end the foreclosure wave threatening the American housing market.
In the last seven years, another massive merger boom has occurred, with concentrations accruing in the hospital, airline, telecommunications, and technology industries. Progressive corporations like Google are key pillars of a cosmopolitan liberal culture. This is the world of the Watergate Babies and the libertarian and statist thinkers who shaped their intellectual understanding of it. ”
—————–
the clintonites are still calling the 200 counties that voted blue for decades, even voted twice for americas first black president, stupid, bigots, racists, bolt 2 things together deplorable, insults daily, trump leads in 7 must win states.
—
Approximately 200 counties that voted for Barack Obama in 2012 shifted their support to Donald Trump in 2016. This trend was particularly noted in key swing states in the Midwest, where many of these counties had significant white, working-class populations.
Wikipedia
In the 2016 presidential election, approximately 200 counties that had supported Barack Obama in 2012 switched their allegiance to Donald Trump. This shift was particularly significant in key swing states across the Midwest.
Counties Involved: Over 200 counties flipped from Obama to Trump.
Demographic Trends: Many of these counties had substantial white, working-class populations.
Notable Example: Howard County in Northern Iowa was the largest pivot county, changing by 41 percentage points.
This transition in voter support highlights a broader trend where certain demographics, particularly in economically distressed areas, moved away from traditional Democratic support towards the Republican candidate. This change played a crucial role in the election outcomes in several key states.
BBC Wikipedia
——-
so what did biden do to break from clintonism, which he was a primary supporter of, why start a war with the russian super power, and support genocide. a stupid chips act stunt, doomed because there was no new deal to provide the needed infrastructure for labor, and corral capitalism.
so why would anyone call voters dumb for voting for trump? i would call them desperate.
Egoculexegonos
@bruce wilder
I also feel a bit like that. We’re being systematically and effectively atomized and neutered while kept in protean, adaptable, flimsy bubbles for props.
I can only point you to marevilous Earth-666 and it happens to be under our own feet. FortUNately, Earth-666 doesn’t only comprise the Anthroposphere even though most of us tend to think it does.
Dan Kelly
different clue,
I am sorry about that.
Here are some download options:
https://thepiratebay.org/search.php?q=koyaanisqatsi&all=on&search=Pirate+Search&page=0&orderby=
Dan Kelly
‘Looking back over my own time in history, I realize that this state of affairs was emergent already thirty and forty years ago. It surfaced, though I did not recognize it at first, when political culture went to abstract demographic categories. “Asian-American” not Italian-Anerican — categories like Hispanic or LGBTQ+ that don’t share an actual cultural experience, only synthesized, generic narratives.’
Indeed.
LatinX!
None of these terms and identifiers (dividers?) were initially congruent with the underlying reality they were superimposed over but the goal, I believe, is to change peoples’ and cultuires’ own idea of themselves in the interest of the global machine.
Thanks as always bruce.
different clue
I found Naqoiqatsi once on line and watched it. It was shorter than the others and was very unpleasant to watch. I mean physically unpleasant and irritating. But maybe that was the stealthy point.
The title is supposed to mean ” Life as War”.
Jan Wiklund
According to China-based commetator Arnaud Bertrand, Xi Jinping in his recent book admits that ‘oversight of the Communist Party by “the judiciary, the public, and the media” was not just something the Party must “readily accept,” but something that he framed as historically decisive – an essential component to “escaping the historical cycle of rise and fall” that has doomed every dynasty in China’s history.’
https://substack.com/@arnaudbertrand/note/c-282309247
It seems that Xi is more aware than some Western admirers that authoritarian Confucianism is not the last cry. It has failed many times before and will likely do so again. At least he is ready to discuss it, and try to find something better.
different clue
When I was a little child, my mother taught me to “not hit back, never hit back. If a bully bullies you, it is just his way of saying hello”. That remains a grievance and a bitter memory I have to this day. I am sure she meant well at the Toxic Pacifism eye-diddy-ological level. But it had the bad results which any normal human could predict.
Here is a video called: “W🤍 Woman Asks B🖤 Pe0ple Not To Teach Their Children 👉🏾If They Hit You, Hit Them Back.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcTPrSuJkKM
Now, since these videos are constantly and consistently mis-titled, I don’t know for sure if this is a passive-aggressive sweetness-and-light Stealth White Supremacist mother trying to make the world safe for the White Super-Predator children she hopes to raise as White Super-Predator children. She could in all innocence be an Ethical Subhumanist Pacifist Sub-human teaching her children to be Ethical Subhumanist Pacifists like herself.
But the first responder featured to this White mother is replying as if the White mother is indeed choice number one.
I remember a college classmate telling me once about something his mother instructed him to do. It appears the class bully was bullying him and hit him just for fun. He tells me that she told him to hide a baseball bat behind his back, approach the bully kid with a hand out to “shake hands and make friends”. And as soon as the bully kid had begun the handshaking process, to take out the baseball bat and hit the bully kid as hard as possible with it. He did, and it worked. I wish I had been raised in that spirit.
Mark Level
Dan Kelley, I never took you for a Gingrich guy or a White Nationalist. I will read your stuff more critically in the future. I denounced LatinX, complete bullshit and I have the right to say it. What do you know about the topic?
Do you queer bash too, or did you when younger? Just curios, please share.
Dismissing entire amorphous groups with cheap, sloppy stereotypes, sad.
Also wasn’t it bruce wilder who tried (mistakenly) to justify the Alex Pretti murder by ICE since “He kicked out a taillight on a cop car previously?” Completely false; he picked up a woman that ICE agent Cowards had thrown on the ground, he died for being a gentleman when also legal-carrying a gun. The Trump thugs took some heat from their own people for this.
different clue
Well, I watched deeper into the video, and it turns out this White woman was indeed a teacher, and she was trying to teach Ethical Subhumanist Pacifist Subhumanism. And any number of people have said that they are not subhuman pacifists, and they will not teach their children to be subhuman pacifists.
Dan Kelly
‘Dan Kelley, I never took you for a Gingrich guy or a White Nationalist.’
Thanks Marke Level.
Who knows? Maybe I’m .00001 percent Gingrich?
Please recommend a percentage-measurer-thingy so I can figure out who the hell I am!
I don’t know what bruce said about Pretti and ICE.
Good day.
mago
I thought LatinX was a Venezuelan porn site?
different clue
The ” LatinX” spelling was invented by Academic Intellectual Lords of Political Correctness as a loyalty-test and reveal of who would be Wokel enough to use it and who would not be. I remember some LatinO spokesfolk themselves saying they did not invent it, they did not ask for it, and they do not like it.
I have thought of 2 ways to satirize it if it still has enough presence to where it still needs satirization.
” ‘LatinX’ , eh? Is that ‘Latinxo’ or ‘Latinxa’ ” ?
Or one could apply the same nu-spelling to other LatinX related words and concepts . . . . ChicanX, MejicanX, CubanX, etc.
Mark Level
Best comment prize to mago. Dan Kelley, one monkey don’t stop no show! “I don’t know about Pretti and ICE. That happened a longish time ago, and you haven’t spent a few minutes to learn the truth” Got it!!
To be hated by a fellow Irishman, 25% more than anything, because i am also Spanish, and briefly gay, you’re lazy, that’s on you not on me. May the road rise up to meet you!!
Viva, IanWelsh.com, to speak your truth and not be beaten down by trolls.
different clue
@Phillip Allen,
Thank you for the links. Unfortunately, since I stubbornly refuse to sign up for any type of Google account, they will remain unaccessible to me. I tried creating an account with a fake name and a fake email address, but their access-code can’t be sent to a fake email address which doesn’t even exist . . . which is only fair.
Oh well . . . I tried. If/when I can figure out how to create a dummy email account under a cut-out name, then I will try to sign up for this Google service that way, so I have a “real” fake email to which their access code can actually be sent.
Dan Kelly
‘To be hated by a fellow Irishman, 25% more than anything, because i am also Spanish, and briefly gay, you’re lazy, that’s on you not on me. May the road rise up to meet you!!’
Geez Mark, I love you man.
I just don’t think the more recent ‘LGBT…X’ has anything to do with ‘the original’ and while I would never angrily tear down a rainbow flag like an idiot…
…I nevertheless am sick of seeing churches and municipal spaces and the like with rainbow flags saying ‘WEEEEEEE Everybody Welcome!!!!!!’ when you know damn well that if you or I were to set up a grill and some tents and say we’re going to start feeding people and providing some safe shelter space….well, again, I don’t have to tell you how quickly ‘Everyone Welcome’ will devolve into idiocy.
Having to ask ‘What are your pronouns’ before one can even enter into a conversation?
It’s insulting to my indigenous nature. My inner animist recognizes it immediately as BS.
I think the branding of LGBT..X is insulting to the non-entirely-‘hetero’-population of which I might consider myself if I were even that ‘concerned’ with my own sexual desires which lean much more towards the vagina end of the spectrum but again, who really cares?!
Oh yeah: I hate motherfucking ICE and I know damn well what they did to Pretti.
These are your words:
‘Also wasn’t it bruce wilder who tried (mistakenly) to justify the Alex Pretti murder by ICE since “He kicked out a taillight on a cop car previously?”
I replied that I don’t know what bruce said about that because I don’t and that somehow morphed into your accusing me of not knowing about Pretti and ICE!
Are you on drugs Mark?
I don’t care. I just ‘sense’ it through the screen.
Some speed?
Or just a lot of caffeine? I drink expresso roast and smoke pot and it’s like a ‘light’ speedball or something.
No more hard stuff for me Mr Level.
Anyway, I imagine I’ll be out at Delaney Hall again soon if I can afford to get up there.
The Revolutionary Workers League has become BAMN! in keeping with the tenor of things these days I suppose.
I think I’m going to start a blog.
sbt42
Late to the party. But with all this talk about Godfrey Reggio’s films, and no mention of his cinematographer’s magnum opus, “Samsara,” I might have something germane to the discussion. This link is for the official trailer, via YT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCkEILshUyU
“Koyaanisqatsi” was life-changing for me, and in my opinion the cultural quilt laid out before the viewer in Samsara is second to none. Check out “Baraka” as well, if you’re a completionist.
Mark Level
Dan Kelly, I 100% share your contempt for the Lawn Sign Poseur Libs, “This household welcomes ALL,” these people wouldn’t materially help anyone below them in the Pecking order, just mutter meaningless worlds. I’d bet they wouldn’t even give a fiver to a homeless person. When I lived in Duluth, lotsa homeless, I would always give the Native People, esp. the older ones some money. More selective with white people, they don’t have the excessive racism holding them down reason for being poor. At least we agree on something.
Glad you hate ICE too; your buddy bruce professed that the Pretti killing planned, no evidence. He did kick out the taillight of an ICE Paddy Wagon on camera though. wilder seemed to me to be saying if someone destroys a taillight of ICE and picks a woman up off the ground he deserved the death penalty. I find that abhorrent.
No, I’m not on “Speed”, tried that fewer than a half-dozen times in my 20s and 30s, never since, don’t like downers either, or any Rx palliatives. Once when I was super-stressed as there was a drive to fire me from my job based on my union activism, my coworker gave me 2 Xanax she had a prescription for, I’d been getting about 3 hours a night of sleep, a huge help to me, and the fabricated case to come after me melted into thin air. Now I did enjoy MMDA, “Molly” when younger, years since I’ve seen that.
I did ALL CAPS signaling Sarcasm, S/, at the hysteria of the racism of the Gingrich crowd, ooh, somebody has a Hyphenated Identity, they’re UnAmerican, deport them immediately!! Maybe Bruce didn’t realize that Stephen Miller hasn’t died, and he did not inherit the Post of Racial Purity Overseer. So sad!!
Just because a group is large and amorphous, if bruce has no identification with or no friends or coworkers in that group, he has no right to come along and say, “You’re identity is pathetic, you’re a piece of shit”, which is what he did to me in the 2 areas I cited, brief sexual “deviancy” (a great athlete is a deviant, they can perform at higher levels than the ordinary or mean) and Latino-Identified more than white, he has no authority to tell us we don’t exist, or should self-deport (though I am planning to), that’s our choice, not his.
Bigots and bigotry are not appealing imo. It’s really that simple. I hope you’d agree with that too, but here the They Might Be Giants song “You and your racist friend” applies.
Oh, and to mago, sorry for doing what dan did to me, misinterpreting Sarc for seriousness. Catching tone in internet exchanges tougher than f2f.
different clue
@sbt42,
Thank you for this. I went to see Baraka several times before it too disappeared from the movie theater lineup. It is Reggio cinematography, but not Phillip Glass music. I had never even heard of Samsara. I will have to take a look.
And if you are a completely complete completionist, there was also the super-short tossoff-afterthought film by Reggio and Glass called Anima Mundi. I went to see it.
The only disappointing thing about it is that it was so short and after-thoughty rather than as big and complete and impactful as ” Koya/Powa” had been. It could take some effort to find the whole thing on You Tube and I don’t have the time right now just before work.
So here is a tiny 6-minute extract from it.
“Anima Mundi (1991) – Perpetual Motion”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4j0CxGK29c
( Could today’s younger digitalized generations who have been raised on 1-3 second super fast video cuts even bear to sit still long enough to follow the sedate slow-building pace of these high-classical analog movies?)
Mark Level
I’m here to do a new post, have to add a detail omitted to post about my dumb MD above. I brought up cannabis and its health benefits as a kind of IQ Test for him, loser failed completely.
I could’ve asked him, in 1865, who was the most powerful person in the world? Moron probably would’ve guessed Abe Lincoln or something, but no– Correct answer would’ve been Queen Victoria. Ruler of various national dynasties through cousins, grandchildren etc. The Russian Czar, German Chancellor Bismark, etc. etc. They’d all fall out by starting WW I after her death, obviously, fight to be Big Dog, One King over All.
Her crack medical team, best in the world, treated her Menstrual Cramps with Cannabis tinctures when young, and her other maladies were treated with laudanum in liquid form, which even the bourgeois had access to. The Caterpillar smoking a hookah atop a Mushroom isn’t because Lewis Carroll foresaw the Hippies’ rise much later, it was a commentary on the prevalence of Legal Dope.
I didn’t convey any of this to him, not worth the breath it would’ve taken. Like talking to a Wall, no new ideas could penetrate his locked-up brain. On the quiet road down to death.
But what I wanted to share was Fat, Needy Mussolini 3 per the AP, his “Celebrations” of US’s Glorious 250th failing from the get-go, since everyone knows he’s running the Country and the World down into a Ditch as deep an Magma-heated as Hell itself.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-crowd-size-state-fair-national-mall-250-b3006937.html
Heckuva Job, Diaper Donnie!! Amerikka is “hot, hot,” as hot as the Earth’s core, and as unsustainable to Life. At least we peons have schadenfreude. Circuses galore, but soon no bread.
different clue
Here’s a funny little video . . . a bunch of experts adding some clarification to someone’s truly brilliant advice.
“Expert advice”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unexpected/comments/1ukacij/expert_advice/