Sophianotloren

In mid-December, 12 hackers, artists, coders, and activists gathered to tackle issues of privacy, surveillance, anonymity, and big data as they manifest in our society. Over the course of one week, 10 presentations unfolded, a short documentary film was shot, and in a frenzy of production, an entire book was made. This was Deep Lab, a group of female cyberfeminists organized by artist Addie Wagenknecht at the Studio for Creative Inquiry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

“I am neither a luddite nor a cyborg. I learned how to code because I didn’t want a bunch of dudes in Silicon Valley telling me what to do.”  —Allison Burtch

The issues that Deep Lab grappled with finally began making news headline in 2013, despite existing for much longer. We knew about China’s sweeping surveillance of its citizens, but few imagined the extent of the United States’ monitoring of much of the connected world, as revealed by Edward Snowden. Cypherpunk paranoia about mass surveillance, the dangers of data collection, secret back doors, and the need for strong decryption, all of which was scoffed at only a few years ago, has been proven appallingly relevant.

Suddenly, we’re grappling with relatively new questions, like: What does the collection of and reliance on big data mean to us as a society? What does mass surveillance entail when more than 75% of the world’s inhabitants have access to cell phones? How do we protect our free press when connecting the dots of communication has become so easy with unencrypted communication? Deep Lab doesn’t answer these questions, but it explores alternative ways of approaching and thinking about them.

“Most of us didn’t choose this co-dependent relationship with the data parasites, but many of us did choose the convenience that in turn sacrificed our privacy. But now we have the tools to become predator to the parasite. Code is code. They used it to invade. We’ll use it to subvert the invasion.”  —Denise Caruso

Early cyberutopians and cyberfeminists dreamt that online space would provide a sanctuary for those who couldn’t find it offline. In 2014, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone still believing in that dream. Deep Lab is a continuation of the cyberfeminist ideals, with an added 25 years of experience; the group rejects cyberutopianism but maintains a steadfast commitment to searching for, demanding, and hopefully building alternatives.

“I’m thinking about how to become more dangerous.”  —Jen Lowe

The chapters of Deep Lab are part poetry, part diatribe, part artwork, part investigative reporting, and part call to action. Starting with a bang, Jen Lowe, an independent data scientist and teacher at the School of Visual Arts, traces some startling ways that companies and governments could use the data they’re constantly collecting. While MasterCard says it imagines a world in which data can prevent famine, Lowe sees how you can be algorithmically targeted for potential offenses (precrime) and the creation or reinforcement of unequal power relationships around the world (data colonialism). The underlying goal of every chapter is to explore how participants and readers of Deep Lab can understand and resist each trend.

Writer, cartographer, and artist Ingrid Burrington details her research into and mapping of the physical infrastructure of the mystical internet. Showing responses to Freedom of Information Act letters and road markings all over NYC that detail what infrastructure lays below, Burrington makes it clear how the physical internet can be deciphered, at least preliminarily, by anyone. This work is invaluable, for how are we to oppose what we can’t see and don’t understand?

“While the difference or distance between online and offline life becomes increasingly fictional, the physical infrastructure of the internet — cables, data centers, towers, satellites — remains pretty opaque to the average user.”  —Ingrid Burrington

Taking the magic out of the tubes and pulling back the curtain that enshrines Silicon Valley are necessary steps if we are to have a meaningful debate about the metadata of our lives. Because, as writer and artist Claire L. Evans writes in Deep Lab, “The Venn diagrams of digital and real life have edged into near-complete overlap, the problems of the real world have become the problems of the digital world … we are inseparable from the web.”

Of course, Deep Lab’s struggle is not entirely new, and Evans uncovers a largely ignored history of early cyberfeminist artists. While the story of the cypherpunk dudes of MIT and Berkeley is oft repeated, I was ashamed not to have heard Evans’s tale about an Australian feminist arts collective named VNS Matrix before. While many of the book’s chapters look to contemporary society for new tactics of protest and circumvention, Evans proposes that looking back on ignored histories may also offer insight.

While gathered at the residency, Deep Lab worked to develop tactics, tools, and frameworks for growing meaningful opposition, but their output offers little in the way of concrete suggestions. That may be for the best. Any tool or product claiming to ensure privacy today is a marketing ploy. This is no easy work, and there are no clear steps. Burrington expertly articulates the Sisyphean task of attempting to counter the infrastructure of the internet, writing:

Nonviolent civil disobedience has seen a remarkable resurgence in the U.S. in the last few years, but I can’t recall a recent time where a protest against regimes propped up by or dependent on technology went after the hardware itself. There are die-ins outside drone testing sites sometimes, and there’s virtual sit-ins and website defacements by Anons, but actually smashing up a server rack or throwing smartphones onto a pyre is both endearingly quaint and painfully ineffective. No matter how much we may rebel against Google or Amazon’s labor practices or role in transforming cities, late capitalism leaves us few choices (…she typed in the Google Doc).

Deep Lab is a momentary utopia, a beautiful but rare project. Its words, lectures, art, and programs offer an exciting — and hopefully more powerful — alternative to monkey wrenching a data center, and the group embodies what’s most needed right now: an open, safe, and free space to have critical discussions about the problems we’re facing. We need conferences, coders, and writers to listen to what the women of Deep Lab have to say, so that their ideas will rupture out from the deep web into the walled gardens of Facebook, and from there into the mainstream.

Deep Lab will be joining forces with NEW Inc and the Media Lab at MIT to continue its work this year, culminating in a series of public programming and exhibitions curated by Lindsay Howard and Julia Kaganskiy.

SOUTHAMPTON, UK — In a literal and perhaps metaphorical high point of the Futurist movement, Italian artist Fedele Azari staged the world’s first aerial ballet. It was 1920. The show came with its own manifesto, written by the aviator and scattered from the participating planes. Engines were fitted with sound modulators. Parachutist performers leapt from the sky. Planes were deemed to be the quickest way to reach an audience in the least time.

The British artist Tom Dale works at a time when speed has lost its innocence. His droll, modified objects and installations are less noisy than Azari’s. The key work in his new show, “Terminal Blue,” features only one plane and no manifesto. Instead, the aircraft will trail a color swatch of varying cerulean shades above the port city of Southampton. The day and time of this event will be advertised in the local paper, which will also print a copy of the color swatch so that readers can match their own free swatches to the spring sky. The stunt promises to come across as a decorating project, deflating the pomp of Azari and idealism of the early 20th century.

When not in use, the several-meters-long banner hangs in John Hansard Gallery on the leafy campus of Southampton University. Dale captions each color panel with the corporate poetry found in many a DIY store: “soft steel,” “calm crescent,” and “African daisy.” The artist has also branded the work with his name together with a crown logo at the tail end of the banner. You might reflect that a strong brand rather than a nimble aircraft is the quickest way to reach an audience in these overloaded times.

But without the help of the media, brands go nowhere. Dale also works with poster-sized carpets, cut to resemble newspapers, with missing strips representing headlines. Like the paint swatch, the front page is an instantly recognizable form. We don’t need the headlines; we know enough to make them up. “Green rules slap £50 on your ferry fare to France,” reads one of the work’s titles. These are the types of paper you would be better off wiping your feet on.

There’s another study of failed communication in the dark form of a full-size garden conservatory coated in lacquer. Where there should be windows there are treacle-colored book spines. The usual pleasure associated with browsing a shelf of books — any shelf of books — is here frustrated by the translucent coating which seals them all in place. There’s a wine guide from 1988, an out-of-date film guide, and a selection of novels, some of which you might actually want to read. Bad luck. Dale once again translates a form of media into a form of objecthood.

“Exit Strategy” is a quintessential piece here. It features a wide hoop of copper piping which meets itself at the base where you find a redundant tap. It works as a visual joke. It frustrates our love of function. You might even say it provides a metaphor, or more likely a prop for thinking: is all contemporary art a similarly closed circuit? Is all thinking about art the turning of an unlikely tap? This is a resonant, if deadpan, piece.

More blank humor is found nearby with a piece called “Rock on Standby.” This features a sandstone boulder the size of a medicine ball with a tiny red LED fixed upon the surface. It blinks as if ready to bring its stony host to life. As we fish around for a metaphorical remote control, this piece might just call to mind the “Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo: this rock also awaits a creative spark. It is as if the origins of life were already digital, and surely this rock we live on always held that potential.

Elsewhere, Dale demonstrates that there can be few more compelling objects than humble fishing floats. He is said to collect the things, and for this show has produced a body of meter-long replicas. Like the swatch that greets you upon arrival, these five batons lure the eye with colorful bands, and the dream of a quiet bend in a peaceful river. Magnified in a white space, they offer the chance to meditate on something even bigger than a pike. Just what are we looking to catch here?

The works collected in the John Hansard Gallery all seem to share a single-minded pursuit of nothingness. The artist expresses this most explicitly in one of the two films looped here. “Leaf Blower” follows the progress of two single-minded groundsmen, who have the endless task of clearing leaves. Each one is equipped with a petrol-driven leaf blower that drones back and forth to give the film an almost psychedelic intensity. Dale has layered the sound to accentuate this, and passages of the limited action are broken up with blank screens of bright color.

Not far from “Leaf Blower” is a piece that might qualify as a mind blower. A webcam photographs a shredder, then sends data to a printer which feeds paper into the shredder; the shredded results end up on the gallery floor. “Infinity Wall” is as witty as any piece in the show, but it reveals a certain violence that a sculptor needs in order to manipulate the material world. Stand in the wrong place at the wrong time and you might be surprised to see your own photo slide down into the tray. From here you can only look on, helpless, as your likeness is shredded for the purposes of another serio-comic installation.

This is a show filled with absurdity. It tells us we’re surrounded by so many objects that — taps on a copper hoops notwithstanding — there really is no exit, no getting away from our material condition. We might escape into the virtual world for a while, but we cannot get off the vast rock we live on. We have libraries full of knowledge, but a slowly accreting lacquer is obscuring it. We have 101 ways of describing the sky, but none really help us transcend it. Tom Dale’s work is a quiet counterpoint to the Futurists one hundred years before him: he, too, makes objects speak, but in a nihilistic, albeit comic, way.

Tom Dale: Terminal Blue continues at John Hansard Gallery (University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, UK) through February 7.

I’m in the middle of being flogged by Courtney Trouble for Banned in the UK (NSFW), an anti-censorship porn critiquing obscenity laws. It’s getting a little hot and heavy and my ass is getting red when the tails whip around and smack the cameraperson, my lover, in the face. We all dissolve into giggles. And […]

So Chris X-ie went full Ourobouros on the subject of Vaccinations. Thank dog Daniel Foster was there to FosterSplain it all to us.

Carrying water for Christie must be some difficult work. Filling the bathtub with hand drawn water?…

So this Daniel Foster cat apparently loves him some twitter and while I have yet to figure out to whom the following is directed, the hoops through which he must jump, including a complete re-write to make his point is quite a hoot.

If you’re one of the people in my Twitter feed this morning, chances are you are badly overreacting to comments New Jersey governor Chris Christie made regarding the importance of ”balance” in government policy on vaccination. To show you why, consider a philosophical and then a political point.

First, the philosophical point. Here’s what Christie said:

Mr. Christie, when asked about the connection between the new measles cases and parents who object to the long-recommended vaccine against it, said that he and his wife had vaccinated their four children. He called that “the best expression I can give you of my opinion.”

But he added: “It’s more important what you think as a parent than what you think as a public official. I also understand that parents need to have some measure of choice in things as well. So that’s the balance that the government has to decide.”

Mr. Christie said that “not every vaccine is created equal, and not every disease type is as great a public health threat as others.”

“I think you should vaccinate your kids. And I support some level of government coercion to make sure you do so. But there’s a limit to the level of coercion I support, and it depends in part on the safety of the vaccine and the magnitude of the public-health threat.”

Is that a fair approximation of what Christie said? If it is, I’m not sure I disagree with any part of it. Do you?

When you have a chance on a do-over, re-writing jackaloon jibberish, molding it into something, putting words that never saw the light of day in the original quote, while completely ignoring half of it, well then, sure. If I were to agree with your “fair approximation bit.”

I mean it would be one thing for the keepers of the kid who was raised by wolves, translated wolf boys gruntings into something understandable, but this is an entirely different fish fry.

Let me put it another way. If you support mandatory, full-spectrum vaccination and oppose “death panels,” you’d better be able to at least gesture at a limited principle located somewhere between the two. To anticipate your reply, of course I think there is such a limiting principle, but there are plenty of tough cases. Children aren’t routinely vaccinated against anthrax, for instance, because of the level and nature of the threat.

Please do…

OK you lost me with the Anthrax. Is there even a vaccination for that? [Edit: Major Kong in comments reminds me that there is in fact, a vax for the thrax, though a bit problematic with respect to gnarly side effects, etc…Point stands, stupid fucking example] Rummy should have had this guy around to put words in his mouth.

Let’s see if there is anything interesting in the comments, because I am done with this shithead and his oh so reasonable tone, also, too, pretending to explain arguments that are not in any respect being made by the people he is trying to defend.

Interestingly large amount of sanity in the comments over there. Apparently to some Christie is not “One of Us.”
But here is a good one.

W.A. Jones • a day ago

Mr. Foster,
Thank you for your comments. I can’t say that enough. I’m really surprised at the conservatives I respect and admire (including David Burge) who are slinging the words “freaks” and “nuts” around so liberally. Do remember that the far left considers anyone to their right to also be a freak and a nut.

I highly recommend the stories posted on The Daily Sheeple website.

My wife is one of those anti-vaccine folks and I can assure you she is no freak or nut, and that she would lay down her life for our children. She and many others are also doing their own research into what is contained in the vaccines. You can look it up — it’s no secret — and all you can say is, “Oh, well, it’s a little mercury.”

That’s a fair argument — fetal cells vs. getting the measles or the flu. But it’s not fair to call other people names because you look past their argument and question their motives or, worse, claim they hate their children.

The best argument I know for the pro-vaccine parents is this: if your child is protected from my child, then shut the hell up because you have nothing to worry about.

I can think of a pro gun nut after the inevitable government issuance to all citizens of body armor stating that he should be able to fire his assault weapon in random directions as ostensible we would all be protected, yada yada, or in an example where the gubment mandates the wearing of full body latex suits…

This game could get ugly and disgusting pretty quickly.

We're told we must be nice. We're told that, if we're too forceful, we're bullying. We're told that we need to be willing to listen and understand and not risk alienating others. "When they get defensive they carry their campaign more fervently, and that has the chance of poisoning other people," said David Ropeik, a "risk communication expert," which is apparently a thing you can be. Ropeik is talking about people who believe that vaccinating children ought to be optional or that it's outright dangerous and should be banned. We who believe that things like science and facts aren't open for your opinion need to be cautious not to insult those who are afraid of shots. "Imagine what calling people selfish and dumb can do," said Brendan Nyhan, who is pro-vaccine but anti-insult.

What the nice brigade doesn't get is that being "nice" got us where we currently are: actually having a debate on whether or not to vaccinate kids. Rand Paul, a man who looks like he just finished porking a teddy bear, is concerned that vaccines can cause "profound mental disorders," which would explain the popularity of Rand Paul. He's for vaccinating, but he thinks it should be voluntary or, poof, Hitler. He doesn't say what we should do by mixing the immunized and the non-immunized, but, hey, government ain't gonna tell me what to do with my babies.

The only fun part of this year of the measles outbreak (and whooping cough - that's coming back, too) is that we're getting to see that the anti-vaxxer community is not just made up of privileged pukes in Park Slope or Marin County. It ain't just hippies who think the Man is always out to get them with their big corporate conspiracy to put chemicals into babies. No, the conservative right's libertarian streak compels some Republican politicians to say shit like this: "I know my kids best. I know what morals and values are right for my children. I think we should not have an oppressive state telling us what to do." That's Rep. Sean Duffy from Wisconsin. In case you're wondering, Duffy is a former prosecutor who was on MTV's The Real World: Boston and was a commentator on ESPN. In other words, he's not a doctor. He ain't even an ophthalmologist. He's a reality TV guy who went to law school. When it comes to medical needs, he quite specifically does not know what's best for his kids. But here he is, mouthing off about it.

Is it possible to talk about Sean Duffy's beliefs without using the words "dumb," "misinformed," "fucktarded," or "ass backwards"? Maybe you could leave out one or two, but, no, it's not possible. Because Duffy's idiotic views should be put in rhetorical stocks so the rest of us can throw rotting fruits of truth at it. He should be pantsed and whipped into the night, bemoaning that he ever doubted reality. And if some future opponent hasn't already made a commercial using the footage of him saying that it's an "oppressive state" that wants to prevent polio, Wisconsin Democrats should just close up shop.

Round and round we go. The corpse of Pat Robertson waved a skeletal finger and declared, "I don’t think any parent should be forced by the government to vaccinate." And then he said fluoride is suspicious, too (yeah, he did). And there's a chance that this will be an issue for the 2016 presidential election, the campaign for which started in, oh, probably 2009.

The reason why we're pretending this is even a debate is that we're not willing to say, flatly, that some things aren't worth talking about. We give in, again, to the mania for giving multiple sides equal time, or any time, even if one of those sides is barking, fucking mad. That's not polite discourse. That's insanity. That's suicide.

(Note: Let's be honest here. Much of the right-wing opposition to vaccines also has to do with the HPV shots. They think that when the teens get them, they're just gonna go crazy with the fucking. The other opposition has to do with allowing exemptions for beliefs so that they can cram through other kinds of exemptions, like for wedding cake bakers or what the fuck ever.)

 

Above: Michael Cannon (5)

ACA Troofers-in-Chief Adler and Cannon claim to have a letter showing that 11 House Democrats thought that tax credits would not be available on the federally established exchanges.  You may not be entirely surprised to find out that the letter does not say what they say it does:

While a different brief for the ACA’s opponents continues to beat the Gruber dead horse, he is mercifully absent from the Adler/Cannon brief. Instead, the lawsuit’s architects cite a letter sent by 11 Texas House Democrats, which they say constitutes evidence for the assertion that “[m]any House members disapproved of the Senate passed PPACA, some because they recognized it conditioned subsidies on states creating Exchanges.”

Adler and Cannon’s characterization of the letter is blatantly dishonest. It says absolutely nothing about subsidies being unavailable on federally established exchanges. The letter’s argument that under the Senate bill “millions of people will be left no better off than before Congress acted” — which Adler and Cannon quote — is preceded by a discussion of how some conservative states have cut or failed to expand benefits under Medicaid and CHIPRA.

In other words, the concern of the Texas Democrats is not that federally established exchanges would not provide subsidies to insurance purchasers. Rather, their concern is that if conservative states established exchanges they would do so badly, and hence make it impossible for some residents to obtain affordable insurance. Adler and Cannon stand the meaning of the letter on its head.

Tacitly recognizing that the argument they attribute to the House Democrats is not remotely supported by the text, Adler and Cannon attempt to conscript one of the country’s foremost health care reporters into their crusade, citing an NPR report by Julie Rovner to buttress their misreading of the letter’s meaning. But, again, nothing in Rovner’s story says that the Senate bill would not provide subsidies on federally established exchanges. I contacted Rovner by email, and she confirmed that “there was never any discussion about only state exchanges offering subsidies that I was party to. I never meant to imply it in my story.”

Wait — it gets even worse for Adler and Cannon. The letter not only fails to lend a shred of support for their argument, it also destroys another of their key claims. One of the many problems with their approach is that it nonsensically assumes that Congress established a federal backstop that was intended to fail. Responding to this obvious objection, Adler and Cannon have suggested that Congress “reasonably expected that states” would establish exchanges, which explains why they didn’t bother to provide the subsidies. The letter cited by Adler and Cannon in this brief, however, makes clear that this assumption is erroneous.  “A number of states opposed to health reform have already expressed an interest in obstruction,” the Texas Democrats correctly observe.

The federal backstop was not created by accident — it was in the bill because it was well understood that not every state would establish an exchange before the deadline, and because failing to create a workable federal exchange would provide strong incentives for conservative state governments to obstruct the ACA.

As things stand, then, the only evidence for the Moops-invaded-Spain theory is the comments of President, Speaker of the House, Senate Majority Leader, Secretary of State, Governor of all 50 states, and Seattle Seahawks offensive coordinator Jonathan Gruber.  (Note: offer void in 2010 or 2014.)

One footnote about this double own-goal is that I believe that for a long time Adler’s position was that evidence about the intent of House members was irrelevant because the ACA was a Senate bill. Apparently, this “principle” was applicable until he thought he found “evidence” that supported his interpretation of the statute. (This kind of thing is apparently more widespread than you’d prefer to think.) I’d hope that if I was going to make things up in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court I’d have a better cause than “kicking millions of people off their health insurance,” though.

Finally, let us turn things over to Daniel Davies:

Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.

…since there’s been some confusion on this on social media, I should clarify that I didn’t write the title. On the question of how the Supreme Court is likely to rule, I remain a doomsayer.

First Chris Christie, then the Only Progressive Choice in 2016, and now Rep. Sean Duffy:

Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) became the latest Republican on Tuesday to speak out against vaccine mandates, saying: “We should not have an oppressive state telling us what to do.”

“I want that to be my choice as a parent,” Duffy, a father of seven, said said during an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Rundown With José Díaz-Balart.” “I know my kids best. I know what morals and values are right for my children. I think we should not have an oppressive state telling us what to do.”

Duffy’s remarks came as an outbreak of measles — a potentially fatal disease thought to be eradicated from the U.S. just 15 years ago thanks to safe and effective vaccination — had sickened more than 100 Americans. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) came under heavy criticism Monday for appearing to align themselves with the anti-vaccine movement.

The Wisconsin congressman explicitly defended vaccine critics, saying: “I think a lot of parents who are smart, well-read — they’re the ones who are choosing not to vaccinate. And oftentimes, those who may not be as well-read — they are vaccinating. So to say you just have a bunch of crackpots who are choosing not to do this to their children, I just don’t think that’s actually true.”

Will Jeb Bush have to make an anti-vaccination statement to remain relevant in 2016? Many people in bed with measles are excited to find out!

Can we change the GOP symbol from the elephant to a 10 year doubling over from a whooping cough fit?

…it’s important to remember something about statements like this one reprinted in the BBC:

“I hadn’t realised it [the original book] had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it,” Lee continued. “After much thought and hesitation, I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication.”

Namely, that they were in all likelihood written by her “dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter,” who has been writing such statements on Lee’s behalf — if not with her knowledge — since at least 2012.

In an interview with NPR last year the author of The Mockingbird Next Door, Marja Mills, noted that the blind and deaf Lee — who recently suffered a stroke — often signs any document put in front of her by Carter.

I know everyone is very excited to read this sequel/prequel of To Kill a Mockingbird, but I have a feeling that something very sad precipitated this novel’s publication, and that it involves taking advantage of an elderly woman.

 

The amount we spend on inmates overshadows the amount we spend on education. The problem with justice in America in one gif.

Photo: tavisalks.com/Remaking America

In this country millions of children are going hungry.  There are as many reasons as there are hungry children, but not a single one of them is the fault of the child.

This year's count puts the homeless at nearly 600,000. Many of them are our veterans, come home from wars with wounds that won't heal.  Nearly a third of them live on the streets.  Some cities work diligently to keep them off the streets, not by sheltering them but by making their attempts to sleep outdoors more difficult.

Our public schools are barely holding together, as funding, along with creativity and our ability to see our children as our future, declines.  Their future is in jeopardy, and there are some who see that as a good thing.

Men and women in their middle years are now taking jobs normally held by teens or retirees.  $20 and $30 an hour jobs are long gone for the masses.  A $10-an-hour job is now classified as a goal to reach instead of a hurdle to jump over.

People who were promised adequate retirements are finding, 30 years after the pact, that nothing was written in blood.  The money they worked for and counted on has been stolen away and they have no choice but to accept it.  As criminal as it seems, it's just the way it is when times are bad and we all (well, almost all)  have to tighten our belts.

Our need to keep health care obscenely profitable is responsible for shortening lives and causing needless pain.  We seem not to be able to make the connection when ad campaigns by insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and hospital chains bombard our airwaves.  Someone is paying for those ads.  We try not to think about who that might be.

Our roads and bridges and buildings are crumbling and we're supposed to believe there is no money to fix them.  We wait for the inevitable disaster that will open the vault to the funds hiding there all along.  Large numbers of people will have to die as a sacrifice before more can live.

Private interests are carpet-bombing the land of the free and the home of the brave.  We say we don't know how to stop them, apparently not even noticing that we've made a habit of nurturing and promoting politicians who make no secret of their allegiance to them.

But I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know.

So why aren't we talking about these things all day every day until something gets done about them? Why aren't we seeing periodic updates on these insults to the human spirit on the news?

A hungry child wonders where he'll be sleeping tonight.

A good person working hard to build a safe future suddenly finds herself jobless with no comparable employment in sight.

A man nearing retirement age finds that the equity in his house is worth a third of what it was 10 years ago, and his retirement package is worth even less.

A person gets sick.  The illness becomes chronic.  Work is out of the question, but the costs to stay stable have risen and are now beyond reach.  Next step: bankruptcy.

Tent cities are springing up, then being torn down.

And so on.

These stories get published and most of us react the way the writer intended, but the big news takes over and the stories, sad as they are, get lost.

Big news like (you knew this was coming) sports world scandals, Sarah Palin doing anything, God's personal messages to certain GOP leaders, the hurtful words one public person used against someone else, and the interminable, advertiser-driven, celebrity happenings.

When was the last time the news media was so captivated by a story about any of the abuses I've listed, they made it "Breaking News" and stayed on it for days on end, without regard for regular programming?

When was the last time the public went on a rampage against those abuses, protesting in numbers so powerful they couldn't be ignored until change finally came?

Never.  It has never happened.  Which is why we're still where we are, and the perpetrators are still where they are--growing stronger in a place where they need not be afraid.

There are powerful factions out there working to build our country to their liking.  They welcome the distractions, and often manufacture them in order to divert our attention away from their efforts to take us down.  After decades of practice, the demagogues have fear-mongering down to an art form.  It's no accident, for example, that Ted Cruz looks, acts and sounds like Sen. Joseph McCarthy.  Or that Rand Paul confuses libertarianism with liberty.  Or that a vengeful, gun-toting God has suddenly become the Right's co-pilot.

They understand the media better than we do.  They know that religion, bigotry, and misogyny push the right buttons and keep the noise going.  They know enough of us are easily distracted and will believe anything but the truth.  Those people are their ace in the hole.  They couldn't win without them.

Our mission, if we choose to accept it, is to bring the dialogue back to the bigger issues and keep them front and center.  Our story is the story of the masses.   We owe it to us all to get it right.

(Cross-posted at dagblog, Daily Kos, and Freak Out Nation.  Featured on Crooks & Liars MBRU)

“Vigilante paedophile chasers LetzGo Hunting are back with a fresh way of working and plans to turn into legitimate crime-busters.”

Link to article

On my way to the Thursday night dance, I pass by an area of town I don’t visit much anymore–not for any particular reason, just because I don’t find myself with any cause to go there. Walking past your old apartment, I am suddenly gripped by a memory, whisked away by nostalgia. I remember that first night, the first time I slept in your arms. You snored, so loudly it woke me up, but I didn’t care. I lay awake for a long time, not able to believe I was there, not able to believe how lucky I was (and still am). I was so unsure of your boundaries, unsure of what was and wasn’t allowed. I remember I asked you, awkwardly, if I could see you naked, if I could touch you, and you said “Yes,” surprised, as if the the thought had never occurred to you. How unused to being an object of desire you were back then! But you caught on quickly. You teased me a little, do you remember? Turning your back to me, not letting me see what I wanted until the last possible second, your lips curving into that mischievous little grin that demands to be kissed. But at last, you let your briefs fall to the ground (they were purple, do you remember? You wanted to impress me with my favorite color, and I was, although truthfully, I would have been impressed no matter what). You let them fall to the ground, and turned to face me.

And when I put my hand on your cock, you gasped.

iraffiruse:

Living the dream

themarysue:

Mulder, calm down.

wasiafooltothink:

"How much money does college cost in America?"

barleytea:

u tryin to start shit labelle

fuck-yeah-feminist:

A look into the experiences of bisexual women who happened to fall in love with men. 

Graphics by Chris Ritter

Good read for those who struggle to understand bisexuality.

… and I basically have been, in my heart, I will always love psychology because you can teach chicks to walk towards cards with dots, and it deservedly becomes a Science paper. This is so cool.

The short version: The authors put some baby chicks in a compartment and taught them that food was behind a square with five dots. Then they removed that card and replaced it with two identical cards on either side of the compartment. In one condition the cards both had two dots. In another condition the cards had eight dots. When the cards had two dots, chicks walked to the left card 70% of the time. When both cards had 8 dots they went to the right card 70% of the time. In other words, when they thought of the number on the card as relatively small, they moved to the left. When they thought of it as relatively big, they moved to the right. And then in a second experiment the chicks were were trained on a card with twenty dots and chose between two cards that both had 8 dots in one condition or two cards with 32 dots. Now the eight dot cards represented a relatively smaller number, and the 32 dot cards represented a bigger one. And still, when they were looking at the smaller number, they preferred to walk toward the left. When they were looking at the bigger one, they walked toward the right. So chicks apparently have an innate number line that’s ordered from left to right, and that’s pretty suggestive that the tendency to left-to-right ordering of the human number line is innate too.

I have a particular interest in emotion research, so my eye was caught by this paragraph in the Perspective:

What is the role of emotions in the spatialization of magnitudes? In both natural environments and laboratory situations, “more” is commonly equivalent to “better.” Chicks, like other animals, prefer more over less food and prefer to follow many rather than few companions. In animals and humans, the left cerebral hemisphere is specialized for the processing of positive emotions, the right hemisphere for negative emotions. If more feels better, could the left hemisphere’s positivity bias favor an association of larger magnitudes with the right side of space, which it primarily controls?

America’s foremost civil libertarian stands up for the most important liberties once again, trumping that squish Chris Christie:

The default position of most Republicans, and Republican candidates, is that individuals can be trusted and the government can’t. How does that manifest when Republicans are asked about vaccine mandates? Kentucky Senator Rand Paul gave a demonstration on Monday when conservative radio host Laura Ingraham asked him to respond to the measles story.

“I’m not anti-vaccine at all, but particularly, most of them ought to be voluntary,” said Paul. “What happens if you have somebody not wanting to take the smallpox vaccine and it ruins it for everybody else? I think there are times in which there can be some rules, but for the first part it ought to be voluntary.”

And surely this principled libertarian stand also has a sound scientific basis?

More crankishly, Paul actually endorsed the belief that vaccines can cause autism. “I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines,” he argued very, very wrongly.

Since he also opposes Obama’s bailout of the health insurance industry, I think your vote in 2016 should be obvious.

Something Something Whig Something Something Burke, Ctd.

Mr. Sullivan continues his demented, long-running performance of "Something Something Whig Something Something Burke" at the Theater of Conservative Make-Believe, once again putting Mr. Potato-head eyes on the steaming turd that is Modern Conservatism and pretending it's really a misunderstood Colonel Steve Austin action figure just itching to bust out of its box and put its Bionic Burke Power Arm to work saving the world.

Which is where my libertarianism cedes to conservatism. At some point, freedom must be tempered if its impact undermines the very social contract that allows it to exist. The inequality we are experiencing as a function of globalization, technology, recession and a tax system so complex it beggars understanding is a real and direct threat to our social coherence and stability as a democratic society. It seems to me conservatives should be among the first to recognize this danger – as Bismarck and Disraeli once did – and forge a public policy to counter it.

This conservatism would embrace universal healthcare as a bulwark of democratic legitimacy in an age of such extremes; it should break up the banks and bring back Glass-Steagall; it should drastically simplify the tax code, ridding it of special interest deductions; it should construct an international agreement to prevent the egregious and disgusting tax avoidance of a company like Apple; and it should seek to invest and innovate in education and infrastructure. 

Some of this inequality cannot be stopped, the globalizing forces behind it are so strong. But mitigating its damage is a real challenge. And conservatives who believe that we are one nation should rise to it.

Busting up banks? Universal health care? Spending real money on infrastructure and education?  As pillars of Conservatism?

Somewhere in the wilds of Vermont, Bernie Sanders is laughing hard enough to shart maple syrup into orbit.

It is in the baroque grandiosity of the lies Mr. Sullivan tells himself about Conservatism that he is at his most Conservative.

Something Something Bismarck Something Something Disraeli.

Sullivan Versus Sullivan

Eric Alterman on February 2, 2015 - 2:16 PM ET

...

How was The New Republic so crucial a bastion of American liberalism if under Andrew, it published and promoted Charles Murray’s racist pseudoscience? (Andrew: “one of my proudest moments in journalism.”) And ditto Betsy McCaughey’s lying, dishonest takedown of Clinton’s health care reform? (Andrew: “I was aware of the piece’s flaws but nonetheless was comfortable running it as a provocation.”) And if it were so dedicated to serious, thoughtful journalism, what the hell was Andrew doing publishing Camille Paglia on “Hillary the man-woman and bitch goddess.” And do I even need to mention that he appointed Stephen Glass as the magazine’s first-ever head of fact-checking? 

But even funnier are the positions Andrew himself took. Back in the days when he was still part-Marty Peretz, Sullivan literally called me a traitor to my country, telling an outright lie about my allegedly stated views on Afghanistan. I repeatedly offered to give thousands of dollars to charity if Andrew could substantiate his lie but he never even tried. He also attacked me as a purveyor of hateful anti-Semitism owing to my analysis of the media coverage of Israel, comparing one of my columns to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Now, he has done a complete 180 and is far more critical of Israel than I ever was (or will be) and viciously attacks the people who used to be his comrades, thereby inspiring his one-time friends and colleagues to wonder why Andrew, himself, hates the Jews. So the old Andrew would have called the new Andrew a traitor and an anti-Semite. And the new Andrew apparently thinks the old Andrew is an idiot, who supported stupid imperialist wars and ran interference for evil countries. (Notice I did not even have to bring up the Trigg thing.) If this person is the most influential “intellectual” in America as I have seen two people claim in recent days, then that’s about the worst thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about my country. Andrew is to intellectuals what Sarah Palin is to politicians and Vanilla Ice was to hip-hop. Seriously, I do not begrudge Andrew his role as a pioneer blogger, nor his genius for self-promotion, but what I find most impressive about him is his ability to somehow convince people not to hold him responsible for the consequences of his atrocious judgment...

I see from Ezra Klein that Andrew Sullivan says that he’s stopping blogging; Klein and others are offering various encomiums. You’ll pardon me if I don’t join in. You see, I remember Sullivan declaring that the “decadent left” was poised to become a fifth column in the war on terror — and of course I remember the campaign of character assassination he waged against yours truly for daring to criticize his then-beloved George W. Bush and his wars. If he ever apologized for any of that, I never heard about it.

pleatedjeans:

obviousplant:

I’m doing important work here

I made this. Follow Obvious Plant for more!

New BAHFest day!



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