Category Archives: rage against the machine

status quo

My religious denomination’s love for the status quo is grinding my gears. The euphoria is amazing. Do I fit in?

They say they voted “love” in the 2020 election and say it was the largest, most transparent, and most accessible election in our history.

prop or not

Sometimes I’ll start the morning running a few text-string searches on political memes I see mostly on FB. The results of “not true” or “can’t verify” are high. I can pick them out on sight with regularity. It’s my fun game for decades.

Some teachers along the way were so helpful in this, public-school ones to boot. I remember them fondly.

do the text, too

TFW a justice org’s e-mail newsletter contains no text and is all remote loading images, so I can’t see squat.

Strangely, pulling up the event, it says it will be closed captioned in multiple languages.

Moral of the story: put the text in the newsletter for the hard of seeing. Don’t rely on images only. Text breaks the sight barrier better.

el derecho de vivir en paz

Morning reading. Chile, Vietnam, the World.

I had a UNC-Greensboro professor from Chile years ago who was in Chile when the big shit hit. I read everything he provided and more.

We became friends. He had a stressed mind and damaged body from being imprisoned in one of the stadiums. Somehow he could still make his way in the world enough to keep researching and teaching.

I had a few courses at UNCG that were mind-blowing. His was one of them.

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/03/05/the-right-to-live-in-peace/

the keys to cuba

Only some keys get to be “The Cuba Keys.” 🇨🇺

Bought it in Cuba, too!

pesticide collars for domestic animals

Story from USA Today, so no telling what factors are at play here, but it sounds plausible. I’ve heard about this issue many times for years.

1700 pet deaths linked to one brand of flea and tick collars. What about all the others? If 1700 can be linked, I imagine the real number is much higher.

The companies that make pet products often make human ones, too, so when I hear “safe, effective, thoroughly tested,” I’m not always sure.

It sounds like regulatory capture and conflict of interest are at play, things that are baked right into our system. It makes for muddy waters on making decisions.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2021/03/02/seresto-dog-cat-collars-found-harm-pets-humans-epa-records-show/4574753001/

vladi stickers

This is a sticker set that I use on a certain messenger. For installing and using it, I was sent a small amount of Bitcoin and now have a timeshare in a dacha in Peredelkino near Moscow.

It pays to be an operative. I’m really liking it.

business park

As I was driving through the business park in Greensboro today that contains an Amazon fulfillment center, I was thinking, “there’s not a business out here that’s paying a cent in taxes.” Like so many of those parks, it had that look about it.

All buildings new, pristine. Not a one ever rented a shabby warehouse then worked up to something nicer.

I’ve seen many that were one-item companies that made such things as an anti-static wipe or a plastic injector pen. My guess is that they burn through the “incentives,” drain assets, then vanish.

But what do I know. Not a thing.

ouch!

I remember when somebody looked at me wide-eyed and said, “you mean you don’t believe the assessment of ALL of the intelligence agencies?”

From today’s reading:

“Why would anyone give the lying, torturing, propagandizing, drug trafficking, coup-staging, warmongering, psychopathic Central Intelligence Agency the benefit of the doubt”

😁

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/02/14/government-secrecy-causes-conspiracy-theories/

columbo 1971 – lee grant starring, HUAC, plus host airport services

I was watching an episode of Columbo on DVD tonight. “Ransom for a Dead Man” 1971.

In the scene below, the company name “Host” on the cocktail lounge in LAX airport caught my eye. Brian and I both worked for Host a long long time ago. We knew a lot of people who did. Host ran a lot of those expensive businesses in airports all over the place.

In the picture below, actors Lee Grant and Peter Falk are going into the Host cocktail lounge where he will shortly charge her with murder.

Well prior to this television drama, Lee Grant was put out of work for a long time due to being charged under the McCarthy HUAC communist thing. She was blacklisted for twelve years, I think.

Will probably start having those type hearings again pretty soon.