Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 54

On another Note

Just had an awesome zoom write in at Hugo House (zoom) with the awesome Naa Akua. If you want a boost to your writing (poetry, prose, whatever), then I highly recommend that you check her next one out on Jan 14th. 530pm PST. Helped my writer's brain, though my internet connection went dead at the worst possible moment (when I was going to hear from poet herself). Sigh. some good gestation though. Enjoy it if you can. 
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Anteeefa? Sigh, UOENO

 Gotta give it to the right, or their grifting content creators (who knows where the grift ends and belief starts, or how each individual mind vacillates between the two), they never stop the hustle, the myth that you, rightwinger, are the hero of this tale. Facts? Well there you are with your facts and here I am with my bayonets, as their former hero once said. 

So that they've switched to: stolen election, we're gonna stop this. Their orange fool has even incited them to go bum rush the capitol and then what happens after?

Yup, like clockwork. 

But don't believe this attempt to deflect blame. Because those calling this a beer putsch are right. This is only a first step, especially if they get away with it (slap on the wrist etc, as many white supremacists trying to tear down Reconstruction soon found out), much like Hitler did. Then, there's this example of Japan and how in the 30s they slowly became worse and worse as those on the right slowly tried worse and worse putsches. 

So call email your rep and let them know this won't stand.

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Cuomo & the Shite Dems

Just to put it out there, Cuomo fucked up in the beginning of the pandemic and is fucking up now. Look at those fines he's trying to hand out, fucking up the vaccination rollout and all to show Blasio up. Seriously, that some centrist dems were touting him as some savior is beyond any reality (and not MAGA levels but pretty fucking close). Sure he's better than Trump, but that's not the fucking standard. 

As for yesterday's failed putsch, see what our right wing fellow citizens think:

As well as the police:

Not surprising. But we now seem to have Dems growing a backbone and saying they'll actually do something about this crap, rather than running to their donors to make sure the spigots are still open. 

 

Good, the talk earlier was some sad shite. These Dems (the moderates) really are looking to lose the next election by their moderation. Haven't learned a damn thing.

 

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Someone Got Got

 Some MAGAt got shot. I can only assume how badly they acted to get shot vs protestors at BLM marches. Can't make those night meetings real awkward. But looks like they're all friends here. Also the cops let them in.

 

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Georgia

Well, it seems like the election in Georgia is over. Should be two seats for the Dems. Meanwhile American Carnage in DC continues. Well, at least they're being consistent there. Also, just cause the dems have the Senate doesn't mean everything will be a-ok from now on. The struggle is just a little easier. There's still the matter of Climate Change and a whole host of other things (infrastructure at home etc).

Slouching towards neo-feudalism

So hopefully I'll be able to read something today at the Hugo House reading. Choosing between two piece rn.  

Not that the world and the crazy Trump train is working in my favor.

Ah, and the centrists at the Times are running puff pieces (playacting at woke by making sure they have women and minorities as the focal point here) for the fossil fuel industry. Part of our neo-feudal future, I suppose. Making the retelling of folk tales all that more important. 

Oh, and how is climate change going? Yeah, not good. As I've said (parroting Climate Scientists):

Think back to the 2010 Russian heat wave. Moscow halted grain exports. At the peak of the Australian drought, food prices spiked. The Arab Spring started with food protests, the self-immolation of the vegetable vendor in Tunisia. The Syrian conflict was preceded by four years of drought. Same with Darfur. The migrants are already starting to stream north across the sea—just yesterday, eight hundred of them died when their boat capsized—and the Europeans are arguing about what to do with them. "As the Pentagon says, climate change is a conflict multiplier."

And as you can see from the article, given the amount of pressure climatologists have to be silent. 

and for their pains the scientists themselves—the cruelest blow of all—have been the targets of an unrelenting and well-organized attack that includes death threats, summonses from a hostile Congress, attempts to get them fired, legal harassment, and intrusive discovery demands so severe they had to start their own legal-defense fund, all amplified by a relentless propaganda campaign nakedly financed by the fossil-fuel companies. Shortly before a pivotal climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, thousands of their e-mail streams were hacked in a sophisticated espionage operation that has never been solved—although the official police investigation revealed nothing, an analysis by forensics experts traced its path through servers in Turkey and two of the world's largest oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

And: 

No one has experienced that hostility more vividly than Michael Mann, who was a young Ph.D. researcher when he helped come up with the historical data that came to be known as the hockey stick—the most incendiary display graph in human history, with its temperature and emissions lines going straight up at the end like the blade of a hockey stick. He was investigated, was denounced in Congress, got death threats, was accused of fraud, received white powder in the mail, and got thousands of e-mails with suggestions like, You should be "shot, quartered, and fed to the pigs along with your whole damn families." Conservative legal foundations pressured his university, a British journalist suggested the electric chair. In 2003, Senator James Inhofe's committee called him to testify, flanking him with two professional climate-change deniers, and in 2011 the committee threatened him with federal prosecution, along with sixteen other scientists.

Ah, I'm sure those screaming about free speech will get on it right away... lol, naw, that kind only wants to punch down. 

Be safe out there.

 

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Solid Article

Solid article here (long, about 37 pages here) on covid, our reaction to it and all the failures along the way.  Much of it, if you've been paying attention, is well known. Trump's reactions (how, essentially, he decided to let American die, never mind the incompetence) also well known. But there were initial fuckups from public health officials. A big one was fighting the previous war in thinking that SARS2 = SARS1. And then it was waiting for more information (more solid data) when there was anecdotal (doctors in China) information about human to human transmission and how easily this thing spread etc. [1]
 Still, much of that, of what happened in spring can be forgiven (to some extent). It's what comes after that's pretty shocking. Birx comes across well as she apparently spent the summer going around American trying to talk sense into mayors and governors. Good on her. But that doesn't explain, then, how many of these places she visited still are messing up (Cali, for example). 
Hell, the article has a bit on Wall Street (how the stocks are doing so well) and manages to not once mention the trillions thrown at them to make sure they can stay afloat. So comprehensive it is not, but it is damn good and worth the read. It also mentions the right wing threats on Fauci, his children. The madness in general, that seems to still be with us as the virus kills thousands a day. Far worse than the spring. But apparently we have to be worried about the right wingers. 
Shame.
Want to hear your thoughts on it. 
[1] I would imagine the public health playbook for pandemics will be rewritten. The article seems to be a little strong pro-travel ban while not really looking at how they worked or didn't work (and perhaps they do while information being able to be sent over the internets allows for a global effort without as much traveling) and which levels of a ban, like a level of lockdown, worked the best, if at all. In fact, that is a weakness of this article in that it doesn't compare all the different ways come countries managed to bring the pandemic under control, or not. Fair, it's only about America, for the most part. And it also doesn't touch on the second wave (where some countries, like Czech Republic haven't been doing so well), which is fair, given the timing. 
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Huh, Didn't Expect This.

It appears that Police are clashing with right winders who are now burning thin blue line shirts. This is Oregon. They even used riot munitions against them. Impressive, though I wonder how much longer it took them to use them here vs elsewhere. 
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A few shorts over on Patreon

A few shorts over there. As well as some poemish stuff. 
Getting to last moments over here, btw. With the election in Georgia still a big deal. See how Mitch is fucking over America? Yeah, well, if you're in Georgia be sure you can vote. Otherwise, I want to see you throw some time or $ to fairfight.com. 
Be safe. Oh and 2021 feels just like 2020, doesn't it? yeah, same forces at play, so don't expect a redo. Except now, with the dumb going hard in the paint, and a cure literally right here, we'll see how long we can fuck things up (re the pandemic, never mind the other issues)
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2020 Peace Out!

What a year, right? Well, I've been busy at work (thankful that I can WFH), busy writing (though, I only got one published, but working on transferring more), busy with art. Some of it dark, and some, I may be doing all wrong. 

We'll see. 
But I sense that 2020 will mainly be remembered for the pandemic. Even though it's only 1 in a thousand people dead (in the US) and one can make comparisons to 1918 (through 1920) and how that killed more per 100k people and didn't make a difference in terms of world events [1]. Well, that it might or might not have made a difference to the world is debatable. 
But the thing is it did make a difference in indirect ways. And I think, in general, pandemics tend to do this. Probably something to do with how a virus works in a divine way (to our ape minds, at least). 
So the reactions to the 1918 pandemic are not studied enough. Another note is that the suppression of the news, much in line with what happened in WWI, meant that there isn't much about the pandemic in our literary history [2]. But that doesn't mean as much as one would think, IMO.
How many brains (besides Wilson's) did the virus fry? Probably more than chemical weapons in WWI, but many people don't think in those terms. They can see the easy cause and effect of the chemical weapons, but not the virus. Hell, until recently, I didn't know that most viruses could wreak havoc on our nervous systems or brains (common viruses, or the flu can affect hearing, smell, erections, and cognitive functions long after they're gone). I only thought a few could do that. 
So, unfortunately, I think we've yet to see the worst of this virus, even after the vaccine has helped with herd immunity. Hell, given the rollout and the crazy out there (mistrust based on decades of elites treating trust as something they deserve and also a way to grift the public) we might not even get that. 
And the reactions may be in ways none of us can predict. Messed up minds, messed up nervous systems, messed up senses of smell? Loss of trust in all gov systems can be added, even if Biden comes in and shows a modicum of sense. 
The reason for that? The propaganda floating out there. Well, PR mixed with MSM's complete uselessness when facing right wing power. To some level, there are some parallels to WWI. That was the war where American PR came to life and was used by the gov to smash all anti-war voices beyond recognition. Now, we have less of a focal point (no real gov sponsored PR, except for the forever wars), but places like the right seem to have perfected their ways of making Trump's continual fuckups seem like genius. 
I had predicted that they would smash up against reality like Baghdad Bob, but apparently I gave too much credit to sensibility of the ape mind. It might just be that PR is only uncovered when an invading army exposes it (Germany WW2, Baghdad in 2003 etc) or is willing to expose it. Otherwise it weaves its way into people's minds and people's sense of history and the mythology becomes truth. 
So with all that, I'm guessing the reaction to the pandemic, once all the conspiracies have filtered through to the people will only further serve to break up the nation's fabric. [3] Other ways it has affected things, like financially showing the gov will give trillions to the superrich and haggle over billions for the peasants, will certainly affect thinking, but since I haven't seen much rethinking (except on the left) from the mainstream Americana since 2008 (and this reaction was 2008 on steroids), I don't know how this unfolds. 
So as you can see, I think that the many people are calling the end of 2020 a time to celebrate are misplaced. With a new admin coming in (and though Neo liberal, at least they will be competent and this pandemic has taught us that competency matters some) some matters will be alleviated, but CC is still there, so are the other sick aspects of our society. 
If anyone thinks we're going back to normal, they are absolutely not paying attention. 
Your thoughts?

[1] It apparently made a difference with Wilson and how he was affected by the flu and didn't fight for a better peacetime situation in Europe. Read The Great Influenza for more. 
[2] Given how easily our lit est is willing to toe the line with respect to authority, this shouldn't be surprising. That it lasted longer than that era, is kinda surprising, but at least it seems scientists have sniffed through and seen that the pandemic did in fact affect things more than we think. 
[3] Think of it this way: some MAGAt gets it, not a bad version, and he loses hearing and erections. Now, who is he going to blame? He's going to have some kind of anger bubbling up (and who knows how the virus has affected his brain) and plenty of channels telling him where to direct that anger (some new tech? some immigrant like me, some darker fella, like me)? You can be certain that no one will be blaming the people who actually caused this. Apes are really bad at this, that's why we need tools like science to help us see through all the junk. 
And a random OT aside, was looking at this doc about Sing Sing Prison and thinking about our cruelty towards those deemed lesser than us. I do wonder how the treatment of prisoners and slavery went hand in hand? Not to mention how the 13th amendment made sure to allow slavery for those in prison. 
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