Nelson Lowhim's Blog, page 64

Meanwhile In Seattle.

Meanwhile, here in Seattle, smoke has made this area unliveable (thanks, right wingers and climate change denialists) for the time being. Holy shit is it bad out there. Also gonna be hot, so without AC, this place is essentially a hell hole. Also, SPD bashing heads at peaceful protests. The more things change, the more they stay the same. How dare these people even think about taking funds from the SPD and spending it elsewhere?
 Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Mark Bradford

 One of my favorite contemporary artists, Mark Bradford, Is out there creating his beautiful paintings. In many ways, his work reminds of the mind maps that I've tried to work on myself (in a different way, of course). Of course, his Quarantine output has been better than mine. Worth checking out.

 

Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Defeating Trump

Since I can't pin on blogger, reposting this.

So here:The Senate is also important, so Actblue is place you can donate. 

Swing Left has a virtual phone bank you can participate in (and some other ways like donations etc). 
Resistance Labs is where you can text to get out the vote. 
Vote Forward is a way to do postcards to help improve voter turnout. 
Princeton Election Consortium has a list of races where your money will make the most difference. They have Senate races by "power" (where your money goes the furthest). And one for redistricting, if you're interested. 
Of course this doesn't mean that our work is over even if the Dems win (there will still be work to do), but it's a good first step. Let me know if I've missed something.

 

 

Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Ah, the Left.

So I consider myself to be on the left (seriously, it's the only place to be if you follow evidence-based reasoning), but boy oh boy, watching some people talk about Trump, like they learned nothing from 2016, is something else. Trump tries a little lefty talk (just like he did in 2016, but guess what, he definitely tried to increase tensions everywhere in the world) that mirrors Eisenhower, and yet even though he increased military spending and taken money away from social goods,  and will continue doing that, they can't seem to understand that. This I find beyond annoying. how can you fall for his fifth grade antics like this? We just need better talking heads in nearly all facets of life and on all sides, but it would seem the ones who scream and fling shit the loudest are the ones you see the most. 
But also, just like the centrists, I feel that for many on the (non-grassroots types, people doing that are real until the end) left, the election of Trump was a boon for business (And trump, with his insect-like instincts, knows this, tbf). So why would they want to see that go away? Even if, like I said, when Biden gets elected, the work to put pressure on him will have just begun.
 Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Damn good book.

I read this book, A History of Violence , just today. It's a very well written book with a lot of violence. But it gives a good description of all the gangs and cartels in Central America (MS13, Barrio 18 and so on). Very good. But also stomach churning. From the human trafficking to revenge, it paints a bleak picture. I highly recommend it. Don't have more thoughts, but I'll get there soon and post them when I do. 
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Michael Moore's Doc, Planet of Humans.

I first heard about Moore's film from my family, after it had been abruptly pulled from Youtube. There was, it seems, something amiss. I too don't like the cancel culture that exists out there.. (that is, the one with power, the right wing). So when something like this happens, it seemed odd. Especially for such a famous filmmaker. I looked it up and on Moore's twitter and it appeared that it was a copyright issue.
Fair, that happens. So he took out the snippet and the movie is back on. Again, fair. But during this interview, Moore did not mention any of the criticisms against his work and tried to make it sound like there was a witch hunt against him. 
Tell you the truth, I have so little trust for our elites that I sense that there is indeed something amiss. So I took him at his word, still finding it odd that no one would criticize his work directly (for the content). After all, I have plenty of criticisms about his other movies that I've seen. I've enjoyed them, don't get me wrong, and sometimes he raises some really interesting points. 
But he always seems to go for bluster when analysis could be better and (in my opinion, obviously this style has worked out very well for him, and it comes down to , what the fuck do I know about documentaries, right? or moving people, for that matter). In the end, I've always seen him as a kind of Malcolm Gladwell of filmmaking, in that there are things that don't vibe, but you always come away learning something, (and as with most things, better do more research into it) so what's the harm right? Just keep a critical mind when watching his stuff. 
So, in the end, I managed to watch the doc and enjoyed it for what it was and then, came away feeling the same as I did for other films by Moore: some decent points, but never nuanced enough to break things down. For example, his claim that a host of green tech has some carbon footprint (and sometimes bad or evil mining practices) to it sounds like a child, because I assumed everyone knew that all these things required some level of carbon or that storage was a major issue (still is, IIRC). 
But it just seemed like a good place for a discussion, so I looked at some of the criticisms of it. This one by Vox and another by Yale (the real one? Who knows?) raised some issues that I did: yeah some things aren't entirely green, but they're a step in the right direction (a movement completely away from cars seems like a smart move to me). And they point out other flaws about the movie that I saw too (like how the bio-mass industry is problematic, but also Moore doesn't understand what carbon capture means). 
Indeed, Moore's obsession with "too many people" did seem problematic to me, since it's not a matter of people but carbon footprint, but even if that was borderline Eco-Fascist, one can merely point that in the passing (no I don't think Moore is at all an Eco Fascist). Not smear the entire movie or him for it. 
And still, even these criticisms didn't take on some decent issues that Moore raised (sometimes implicitly): that perhaps we do have to think of ways to spend less energy. Here in the US, that's an especially big issue. IOW not only do we have to make the switch to these green energies, but also try to spend less of it. That does mean an almost complete lifestyle change. People trying to say nothing has to change are really part of the problem right now. 
And given that we on a trajectory to an Eco-fascist world, we'd better heed some of what Moore said. 
So for shame on all these critiques. If there's a good critique of the movie that I'm missing, I want to hear it. Any thoughts from those who did see it?


Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

I know how you like the fairy tales, Johnny boy, so I thought this would look good in your mind.

Have a short story out by Swamp Ape Review. Here's the story, so check it out and enjoy. Might be one of the last I did in that Borges style I used to like so much. Not that I'm saying it isn't something I'll do again, in fact I appreciate the framing of the story and I think it only adds to it. Check it out and tell me what you think. All right, I have some writing to do. Peached out.
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Cops.

Read this article on the SPD and how an officer logged more than 24 hours of work in a single day (that's some real tough shit). Remember that many don't live in Seattle and actively hate the people who do live here. Then remember that even our city council (in liberal Seattle) has backed off even slight defunding of the police (and spend money on other things that could improve the city, to include social workers). I mean, just damn.

 

Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

I know how you like the art, Johnny boy. So I thought this would look good on your wall.

 Here's a link to the piece. Bottom of the page. I'll update this to have the prints out. How is everyone? Safe, I assume? Also this piece of writing. 

Well, Trump has been especially loud the last few days, so it's quite possible that he's distracting us... from? Well what exactly? Probably Covid deaths, and probably the Rod Rosenstein revelations that he hindered the FBI from looking into Trump's ties with Russia [1]. 

Now why do you think this is? They will probably throw the book (and maybe do extra-judicial killings against BLM when they can) at anyone on the left, to include made up charges, but why are they hesitating here? Yeah, same team so they can't. 

I'm not saying it's 100% yet, but it's better odds than a tossup. Laters

[1] I'm not one who thinks Trump is at all Putin's puppet (not given the exacerbated tensions between the two countries to say nothing of the threat of nuclear war between them) but I do think he had an oligarchic (and shady af) relationship with him as most billionaires would. And that would reveal some of his other shady dealings (hence no tax returns etc etc etc).

 

Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.

Trump's Trying to Steal an Election

Somehow, google deleted my previous post on how to act for this election
So here:The Senate is also important, so Actblue is place you can donate. 

Swing Left has a virtual phone bank you can participate in (and some other ways like donations etc). 
Resistance Labs is where you can text to get out the vote. 
Vote Forward is a way to do postcards to help improve voter turnout. 
Princeton Election Consortium has a list of races where your money will make the most difference. They have Senate races by "power" (where your money goes the furthest). And one for redistricting, if you're interested. 
Of course this doesn't mean that our work is over even if the Dems win (there will still be work to do), but it's a good first step. Let me know if I've missed something. 
Enjoyed it? Share it via email, facebook, twitter, or one of the buttons below (or through some other method you prefer). Thank you! As always, here's the tip jar. paypal.me/nlowhim Throw some change in there & help cover the costs of running this thing. You can use paypal or a credit card.