good morning, it's 7 april 2017

Yes, Trump has shown now that he knows he can completely disrupt the news cycle - and take everyone's eyes off whatever they were looking at - by bombing someone.

While I will be covering that, I will not let this particular mission succeed. Let's start with Gorsuch.

"Gorsuch heads for confirmation as Senate tears up own rules" and "Gorsuch heads for confirmation as Senate tears up own rules" are two versions of the same story. McConnell was blaming the Democrats for "unprecedented" behaviour towards judges today and I just wanted to punch is smarmy little prune-pit face through the monitor. What a fucking bastard. The ability to spew that kind of unmitigated bullshit - how does anyone not just want to hit him?

"House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes recuses himself from Russia probe," while continuing to insist that everybody is lying about him and it's all baseless. I'm sure they're all hoping this goes away for a while as Trump bombs Syria; I was wondering whether you'd get the North Korean war or the Middle East war first, and I guess now we know.

You're already getting calls to "rally around" Donald Trump. FUCK. THAT. If you do that I don't even know what you're doing reading this. I'm sure though that the "CIVIL WAR" (Wherein "Steve Bannon Calls Jared Kushner a ‘Cuck’ and ‘Globalist’ Behind His Back") will be quelled at least a little, even if "Inside the White House, paranoia and unrest among top staff" continue to be a fair degree of the norm. All of the focus on it will vanish, though - unless we keep it up. See also: "Donald Trump Just Started a War He Cannot Win," which is not about Syria, but about GOP infighting - particularly between the neofascists and the Liberty Caucus.

"Top Democrats Are Wrong: Trump Supporters Were More Motivated by Racism Than Economic Issues" is why nothing has budged Trumpist and Republican support. It'd be even more interesting if they queried about misogyny. But nobody wants to talk about that, do they?

"Trump: We've had 'one of the most successful 13 weeks' in history" - today marks the 11th week - and again the jokes write themselves.

No one would be surprised by "Cutting Off 'Fly-Over' States, Trump to Axe Amtrak for 220 Cities." Also high speed rail projects in California are defunded. And I don't know what, specifically, is at the root of Trump's obsession with coal, but "Bureau of Land Management Changes Website Homepage to Coal Bed Photo" kind of sums it up, doesn't it? At least it wasn't the EPA.

Economically, regarding the summit, we had this article beforehand: "Why Trump wants the U.S. to act more like China." Just another reminder: the GOP never believed in any of its supposed principles. None of them. Not a one.

So, finally, let's get to Syria.

The racist and misogynist pro-rape Mike Cernovich: "#SyriaGasAttack was sponsored by deep state" - the conspiracy network is on it. But it started in Russia, then moved into white supremacist circles. Russian Troll Army? Perhaps. They knew the US was going to bomb.

The bombing, of course, was definitely not their idea. One of the few things that gets both parties all excited is bombing a bunch of people, and earlier yesterday, "Hillary Clinton: US should 'take out' Assad's air fields" set the tone. And several hours later, "U.S. Launches Missiles at Syrian Base After Chemical Weapons Attack." The usual cheerleading and calls to "rally behind President Trump" are flying, and again: FUCK THAT AND FUCK ANYONE WHO SAYS IT. You can see the Now He's Presidential rehabilitation going even in the CBC's "Missile attack on Syria a 'win-win' for Trump, say some analysts" and "McCain, Graham applaud Syrian airstrikes," but no - he's still the same dickbag he was yesterday.

I'm not sure how much the New York Times knows about "What We Know and Don’t Know About the Missile Attack on Syria," because some of their "things we know" have been directly contradicted elsewhere. I imagine that it'll be updated, however. We do know that Putin - unsurprisingly - is unamused ("U.S. missile strikes at Syria base 'in violation of international law': Putin")
but that's part of the point of doing this, so how much of that is real and how much is show? No idea. ABC news the Syrians may've been ready for this, in "Eyewitness says Syrian military anticipated U.S. raid."

Finally, let's close on fascism in the workplace: "Having a job in America means being subjected to continuous, intimate surveillance." And that isn't going to change any time soon. The four-year war won't begin to be enough for that, because I don't believe for a second that the Democrats would make meaningful fights against it. Quoting from the article, the attitude is basically, ""If you didn't want your employer to know about sensitive, private information, you shouldn't have a sensitive, private life, mumble mumble mumble" (recent corollary: "if you don't want to be in the FBI's giant, illegal face-recognition database, just don't have a face")."

Things just got really nasty. The two-year and four-year wars are now well underway. Good hunting.

( It's April 7, 2017; this is the news )

green across the board and ready for combat

Okay, I posted this a couple of places, but! In response to the Livejournal TOS, I have like 400% cleaned up and dusted off my Dreamwidth account, which hasn’t even been idle, I’ve even been originating posts there, but still. It’s all shiny and buffed now.

Basically fuck yeah http://solarbird.dreamwidth.org is what I’m saying.

It is freakish to be on an LJ-style site and see stuff just… happening everywhere. Do you know how long it’s been since I said “jfc my friendslist is busy”? DO YOU? Okay, about two hours, but I mean before that.

I went and played a short round of Overwatch at 11:30pm. When I came back there were like five new posts. And a bunch of comments. And two friends requests. From strangers. Which were not bots.

I wrote a Fascist Watch newsletter starting around midnight. More new posts. Another friends request. Comments.

It’s not 2004 anymore, but it sure as hell isn’t 2015 either.

Basically, I think what’s happening is that all the scattered people who were still actually using LJ, plus all the people who weren’t but were kind of serious about going back to it at some point, are the ones actually migrating. And they’re all going to the same place, and they’re all looking for everybody else moving over. (Particularly in this community, which was set up when all this started happening.)

One thing I’ve said many times in running shows: an overstuffed smaller room completely beats a half-empty larger room. And what I mean is: for energy. Of the crowd, of the show.

Dreamwidth is smaller than LJ. Post-migration Dreamwidth – even including the active people there already – will most likely still be smaller than LJ was even four months ago. At least, on the Latin-character-set side.

But it’s a smaller room. You look out, you don’t see lots of empty seats and tweet repost botjournals. You see people trying to figure out where they are, and get set up. And going, “..uh… hi!”

It’d be hilarious if the long-considered (and oft-mocked) Livejournal revival actually happened – but on Dreamwidth. And entirely and only because Livejournal finally augured itself in.

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Are you ever NOT going to fall for that?

The Onion is disturbingly on point today:


This strike accomplished nothing else, certainly. The Russians were told, which means the Syrians were told, and bunkered their planes and moved their military people. Reuters reports it's "a one-off," which is consistent to similar distraction attacks in the past.

And, of course, the clown commentariat class is all spooging themselves over SHINY BOMBS. Here's video of CNN and MSNBC praising the military and these strikes without knowing anything at all about them, just like always. <genji>So predictable.</genji>

Here's a Twitter thread that will step through the pieces. Do not fall for it. Do not let others fall for it.

Fight.

i saw an some au art of "venom" (talon tracer) and widowmaker so let's origin story that

"You know," said ░░░░░░, carefully manipulating microforceps above the small silver device sitting atop the matte glass workbench, "I really have to hand it to the gorilla. This is a very clever piece of hardware."

A short series of beeps, a blue light, and she leaned back, smiling at her own cleverness. "It's a shame they sent him back to the moon."

"He always was the smart one," agreed Amélie. "I met him... a few times, before." Before Overwatch was shut down. Before its agents were decommissioned or exiled. Before many things.

"But can you make it work?"

░░░░░░ laughed. "Can I make it work. Please! Of course I can! All it needs are some tweaks to its software. And a few more functions." The Talon hacker raised some screens, flipping through lines of code. "He obviously never got to finish this code. There are all sorts of missing case handlers." And, she thought, peering at class stubs, extensions. What they don't know won't hurt them. "But the core functionality is all in the hardware. It'll be easy."

Beside them, in the corner of the room, an empty chamber flickered, and lit up, glowing right blue, then briefly yellow, then brighter, almost taking form - before, after a flash of red, it was again empty. For just a moment, if the right person looked at the right time, they might've seen a small figure in a pilot pressure suit, before it was gone.

"She keeps almost being able to land here, doesn't she?" said the assassin, who most definitely did see it. "I wonder if she has any idea what has been happening since..." She looked back to Winston's little device, and then to ░░░░░░. "How long?"

"If I had to push it?" said the hacker, "...eh, two, maybe three days. But if you want me to be suuuuuure..."

"Be sure."

"...oh, give me a week. And unlimited access to hardware, so I don't have to waste time stealing things."

She'd lied, of course. She could write and test the software in a day. Even Winston - who was far better at hardware than software - could've done it in two or three, if the UN hadn't stepped in when they did. But it would take that long to make a second version of the hardware, for herself, which the upper-ups would find and she'd say was for testing, which was even kind of true, and a third version, for herself, which they would most definitely not find and which she would most definitively keep. As she was fond of saying, a girl always needs the latest tech.

"Very well. I'll talk to the directors, but - consider it approved. On my authorisation." She touched a panel; a door unlocked, and opened, revealing the ruins of the Overwatch research facility outside. "Don't short-cut this, ░░░░░░. Be. Sure."

That, thought the hacker, almost sounded like an emotion. Let's file that away for later. "C'mon, Amélie, am I ever not? Stop bothering me. Go outside, shoot some wings off of mosquitoes or something." She cracked her knuckles, dramatically. "Let me get to work."