…fatigue fatigue [DOT 2/8/20]

tired of being tired of this shit...

…there are a lot of things I try to not go on about in these posts

It’s hard to believe, four centuries after Shakespeare, that the fear of being unmanned is still so potent that it could wreck a country.

…given the general profusion of links they tend to contain I’m generally conscious that people have a finite appetite for scrolling [as it happens you can skip the whole thing & warp yourself straight to the comments by clicking on the little number by the title so don’t mind me if you’ve got something more interesting to say…] but one of them concerns generally being tired…I mean…we’re all tired…but for the most part it’s fair to say that when it comes to the notion of a “sleep-debt” I have a lifetime position that does a fair impression of the US national debt…which is to say the numbers are staggering to begin with & the effect of the whole pandemic thing has not so much doubled down as moved on to invoking orders of magnitude

Infections Swamp the U.S., Which Recorded 42% of All Its Cases in July

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/countries-report-record-coronavirus-case-rises-u-s-faces-stark-projection

…but before I get to the part where the links spill out & you can decide whether to ask yourself “what exactly the fuck is going on?” or “what kind of fucking nutcase reads that much of this shit at the weekend?”

The Lincoln Project’s plan for preserving the union: Drive Trump out of office by driving him nuts

…there’s another kind of fatigue fatigue that I want to make sure gets a dishonorable mention

Masked men, clad indistinguishably from soldiers, yanking civilians off the street in the dead of night and throwing them into unmarked cars is the modus operandi of totalitarian regimes — or the stuff of dystopian fiction.

…this shit right here

…this malignant synthesis of overlapping costumes for people dressing up to pretend to be something they’re not in service of aims & intentions that are very possibly the antithesis of the things they cleave to in search of justification

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/couple-who-yelled-white-power-black-man-his-girlfriend-arrested-n1235586

…this is no different from a.n. other banana republic cliché of a dude with a magnificent moustache & zero morals riding a coup to the spot that lets them best subjugate the population while defrauding the nation for his own personal gain…or if you prefer a more realistic comparison then to that biker gang that turns out for Putin to fuck up protestors &/or those whose sexual preferences are…not preferred…or even the definitely-not-serving-russian-military guys who tended to crop up a lot in Ukraine (& on the payroll of *checks notes* the russian military) wearing military uniforms & wielding russian military ordnance…like the kind that shot that passenger plane down…but I digress

Voting by Mail Is Crucial for Democracy

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/01/will-trump-defy-voters-let-him-try

…although only a little…the russian example is sadly one that all too often bears examination as a point of reference these days…because so much of what informs the fractured reality of the media landscape in the throes of this particular campaign season is borrowed from some very well-thumbed pages in their playbook…& that overlap functions like layers of redundancy…each set of toy soldiers borrows from that which is represented by the others to “enhance” its own stature & the implicit threat invoked by its appearance…while at the same time managing to seem as though a whole exists which encompases all of them…at the same time that each can explicitly disavow the others wherever & whenever it suits…hateful stupid runs deep

In Trumpworld, the Grown-Ups in the Room All Left, and Got Book Deals

…& we know that shit

…it ain’t new

…but so much is…& with it come vectors & avenues for confusion, obfuscation, obstruction, desctruction & outright manifest corruption the likes of which the first world countries of the western world have fancied themselves immune to since back when the Berlin Wall & the Iron Curtain fell & they won the Cold War

Germany has woken up to a problem of far-right extremism in its elite special forces. But the threat of neo-Nazi infiltration of state institutions is much broader.

…so shit like this

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-may-force-tiktok-sell-its-u-s-operations-n1235525

…to the choir Dolt45 preaches to that’s just common sense…that’s the man of the hour standing up to these nebulous forces of digital influence just like with all that Huawei stuff…that it might be yet another electoral liability doesn’t matter, you see

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-s-threatened-tiktok-ban-could-motivate-young-users-vote-n1235587

…because one of those core principles that comes as directly from that russina playbook as the talking points the alleged president routinely uses (generally to push back against some of the more obvious ways people whose job it is to report the factual aspects of his actions & their consequences are equally routinely unable to avoid embarassing him with) is that fucking shit up just so there’s generally an abundance of fucked up shit forming as much as possible of the context for the shit you consider it important to ensure you fuck up…well, that’s just common sense too

Homeland Security Reassigns Official Whose Office Compiled Intelligence on Journalists

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/dhs-official-whose-office-compiled-intelligence-reports-on-journalists-and-protesters-has-been-removed-from-his-job/2020/08/01/story.html

…except that I am almost entirely fucking certain that the man has less than no idea how the fuck the interplay between tik tok as a company, the devices on which its content is displayed & the users that generate that content functions at a technical, functional, legal, corporate, logisitical, geographical or even theoretical level…because literally none of that stuff is remotely important to him…but it should be

Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman’s retirement from the Army after more than 21 years of service took effect on Saturday, the same day his sharply critical op-ed of the president was published.

…whether or not it should be in the case of Tik Tok I leave for others to decide

…but in this world

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/31/data-isnt-just-being-collected-your-phone-its-being-used-score-you

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/break-big-tech-congressional-probe-idea-may-be-gaining-steam-n1235320

Why a Data Breach at a Genealogy Site Has Privacy Experts Worried

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/apple-now-world-s-most-valuable-company-dethroning-oil-giant-n1235534

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/30/antitrust-amazon-apple-facebook-google

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/snacks-snafus-10-highlights-wednesday-s-tech-hearing-n1235258

Scientists from the consumer genetics company 23andMe have published the largest DNA study to date of people with African ancestry in the Americas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/07/31/google-accused-antitrust-retaliation

…the company looking to swallow Tik Tok up is…I’ll give you three guesses…& be surprised if you need more than two?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/07/31/tiktok-trump-divestiture

Negotiations aren’t believed to be dead, but the companies are trying to get clarity on White House’s stance

https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-and-bytedance-put-tiktok-talks-on-hold-after-trump-signals-opposition-11596312611

…good luck with that

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Report Income of at Least $36 Million in 2019 – the couple’s investments, mostly in real estate, were worth at least $204 million and as much as $783 million.

…it’s hard to be clear when you don’t understand your own bullshit, much less the shit you’re trying to bullshit about

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-campaign-strategy-shift-makes-push-early-voting-states-n1235544

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-campaign-in-crisis-as-aides-attempt-august-reset-before-time-runs-out/2020/08/01/story.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/inside-white-house-s-attempt-message-its-way-out-coronavirus-crisis

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/hogan-voting-plan-backlash/2020/07/31/story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/democrats-demand-answers-from-us-ambassador-after-reports-he-asked-brazil-for-favor-to-help-trump-in-2020/2020/07/31/story.html

…which they emphatically do not

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/congress-deeply-unpopular-again-as-gridlock-on-coronavirus-relief-has-real-life-consequences/2020/07/31/story.html

Ten bucks left, no place to go: How the pandemic and a broken unemployment system are upending people’s lives

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/white-house-officials-democratic-leaders-convene-rare-weekend-talks-as-unemployment-benefits-expire-for-millions/2020/08/01/story.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/some-workers-sickened-covid-19-face-extra-challenge-proving-where-they-got-it

…hence the comparatively straightforward time of it Joe Biden’s been getting

Tammy Duckworth Is Nothing and Everything Like Joe Biden

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/classic-do-no-harm-strategy-biden-s-low-key-campaign-n1235199

Many of his aides and close allies are veteran Washington hands who have profited from advising big corporations. The Sanders-Warren wing of the party is not happy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/31/why-would-biden-pick-human-lightning-rod-vp

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/4-ways-biden-s-running-mate-could-help-or-hurt-n1235575

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/how-joe-bidens-surprisingly-ambitious-climate-plan-came-together/2020/07/31/story.html

…but you know what

…it’s not like there aren’t examples out there

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/how-a-packed-slum-in-mumbai-beat-back-the-coronavirus-as-indias-cases-continue-to-soar/2020/07/30/story.html

…it’s pretty much always been a matter of where you look for them

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/08/01/shirley-chisholm-black-women-biden-vp

…although some are harder to look at…much less learn from

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/kanye-west-s-2020-apology-kim-kardashian-s-plea-harsh-truth-mental-health

…& others maybe sound good but might not have been entirely tested as yet

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/former-new-orleans-mayor-mitch-landrieu-leader-moment-racial-reckoning-n1234468

…still

…at least it’s not monday

…for a few more hours, anyway

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10 Comments

  1. Did you happen to see Rooo’s Jam on GT last night? Someone posted a tweet from Don Winslow about trump going back to Walter Reed yesterday for an unscheduled visit. I’ve been looking at every news site and I don’t see anything about it.

      • This is the tweet from Winslow

        (CNN) President Donald Trump’s visit to Walter Reed on Saturday did not follow the protocol of a routine presidential medical exam, according to a person familiar with the matter.

        — Don Winslow (@donwinslow) August 1, 2020

         And oldwomanyellsatclods posted these links, the second shows a large bruise on his hand. The speculation is that it’s where an IV may have been inserted.

         https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/furor-erupts-over-donald-trump-his-giant-bruise-and-walter-reed/31208/

        http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Trump/db4858d0f01e413e8dea364d56700163/6/0

        • Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth I went to college. A stegosaurus moved me in, in fact. It was/is a Jesuit college. I had done so well in high school and aced so many AP exams I was admitted as a sophomore but was told I’d have to spend four years. I took full advantage. I did a non-sanctioned Junior Year Abroad (applied on my own) and then stayed abroad, but I finally came back.
           
          I was thrown into a PoliSci class. It was fascinating in a way. The last classroom session was this valedictory speech by the Jesuit professor. “This is why we must believe in a Heaven and a Hell and an afterlife.” Must we, I thought, good Enlightenment rationalist that I was/am. “Consider Hitler. What if he were captured alive? What could we possibly do to him to make up for the barbarity he inflicted on the world?” Good point. “No, there is an afterlife, there is a Hell, and Hitler is there, for all eternity. Pain, suffering, for all eternity.” 
           
          I often think of that Jesuit Father, now more than ever. I don’t want to kill Trump or any of the hundreds of succubi draining the life out of this once great country. They will all die when their time comes. Did you know that Dick Cheney is only 79? He’s had like 18 heart transplants and he’s still going. I thought he was at least 79 when he was Shrub’s VP.
           
          Their time will come. Let’s say there is an afterlife. Let’s say there is a Hell. I’m sure I will go there. That should be interesting.

          • wait….so..like…18 people died just to keep dick cheney around?
            godguckingdamn…..thats a management decision and a half…
            (i know it was hyperbole)
            anyhoo…i absolutely believe there is a hell….i just think we are already in it
            the only way is up from here baby
            or could be its just lights out when i die….im okay with that too

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