on last night’s SOTU

[solarbird]

Honestly I could just keep reposting this over and over again:

I do note that the fact he felt it necessary to go back over and over again to the rawest of red-meat hate-mongering – taking so many dives into the blood pool – implies to me that he is aware of how hated so much of his agenda is, even amongst his supporters. Some of them are starting to recognise that it’s real.

All those booing crowds at those Republican town halls are having a real effect. Keep it up. Be aware that the more successful we are, the more he’ll lash out at queers in general and trans people in particular – he’s picked up Putin’s hate for the queer community in its entirety, and will do his best to use it as a whip to keep his cult in full froth.

Fun fact: Ever wondered by Putin hates “LGBT” so much? It’s because Russian queers – with their underground communication networks back in the Soviet Union – were critical in stopping the hardline coup d’etat against Gorbachev. They kept communications open where no one else could. That coup attempt – and more, its failure – ended the USSR. Putin was on the side of the coup, and has had a special burning hatred for LGBT people ever since.

In obviously unrelated news, I finally checked a box off my to-do list and have an amateur radio license. I’m KK7ZLU and my cheap low-power starter radio should arrive next week. If you’ve ever considered doing the same, the test is pretty easy, the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual is affordable, or you can use this online study guide for free instead if you prefer. You can even practice the exam as many times as you like online, but don’t just memorise answers, that’s silly.

Starter radios are cheap these days too. You can buy functional if very basic 4W portable transceivers like the Baofeng UV-5R for literally $20 on places like eBay. (eta: or the slightly higher-power GT-5R for almost the same price, see comments.) If you still have an old license but haven’t had a transmitter in ages, maybe it’s time to pick one up.

I mean, it’s frankly amazing how little you have to spend for all this kind of thing at the moment. I expect it’d be pretty useful in an emergency. Particularly with the Asset and his puppetmaster dismantling disaster response.

Just a thought.

But regardless – yeah, his whole agenda is incredibly unpopular, and the more people face up to what it actually is, the more people hate it. It may sound like 44% of people reacting very positively to his SOTU speech is incredibly high, and very bad news, but somehow, according to the reporting on it from this morning, it’s literally the worst number for a first-year SOTU in polling history. It’s the first time anybody’s been below 50% on this metric. Yes, that includes Joe Biden.

So when you hear people quoting that (or the other number, which is higher), keep in mind: they’re both the worst numbers in the history of this kind of poll. Americans like first SOTUs for some reason, even when they’re horrific, and despite everything, most people still have no idea what he’s been doing. They’ve ignored it all.

Brave hearts, folks. It’s gonna be a long and bumpy ride – but not just for us. He’s feeling the shocks, too.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Comments

[rmd]

FUCK YEAH HAM LICENSE! 73 de N1KXE.

[solarbird]

Do you have/use a radio? I don't have anything that does HF yet (and what's coming in next week won't change that) but I do intend to get an HF set and it'd be fun to try to do an actual long-distance contact :D

[rmd]

I do but haven’t made an HF contact in forever. Probably early 90s when I was using the Northeastern W1KBN radio club shack.

Once the weather is better I’ll try fucking around with WSJT-X (https://wsjt.sourceforge.io/wsjtx.html) which looks like fun. It’s a low power digital mode that’s on the “stamp collecting” side of things where you want to collect “parks on the air” or a contact in every grid square. I would totally be up for trying to make a contact

I am a general now but I like the rationale for going to extra I heard from someone: not having to keep track of which parts of the amateur bands you can use since extra can use all of them. :)

[solarbird]

I've already ordered the general study guide because well why not xD

[gorgeousgary]

For all Jeff Bezos is trying to turn the Washington (com)Post into a MAGA mouthpiece, one of today's articles did suggest most of the people who watched the speech were Republicans, so naturally the stats are biased in the Orange Toddler's favor.

[solarbird]

Naturally, right? But it's always partisan, and even with that, these are the worst numbers since this number started being tracked.

And that's good.

[dewline]

Bezos also needs to (re)learn that heel turns have consequences.

[solarbird]

really

fucken

does

also I date this to his surprise move to Florida a couple of years ago. I was like, "...this is for reasons and not the ones he's giving."

still think that

[kathmandu]

"Russian queers – with their underground communication networks back in the Soviet Union – were critical in stopping the hardline coup d’etat against Gorbachev."

Wow, I did not know that.

[solarbird]

Yep.

That's where it comes from.

I mean, he's an authoritarian dickbag and socially conservative so he was never going to be a friend, but he's got a special hate for queers and that's why.

[kathmandu]

During the Cold War, USA rhetoric gay = communist. The Soviets said gay = capitalist. Back in WW2, the Nazis claimed gay = decadent western etc. I never understood why sexual orientation was seen as having anything to do with economics or politics.

Is this "underground communication networks" part of the reason?

[solarbird]

No, western hate for queers goes back way further and is based more on specifically western-specific expressions of misogyny than anything else. Where being gay or lesbian was seen as gender-role affirming, rather than contradicting, it was fine, or in some cases actively good. (Just ask the Ancient Greeks and Romans, particularly various segments of ancient Greek society which held that man-to-man love was the highest form of eros.) But in the later-Christian West it was seen as gender-role defying, and so, became evil because misogyny.

[solarbird]

I mean, am I oversimplifying to hell and back there? Yeah. It's a comment on Dreamwidth, you're not gonna get a dissertation. But I'm still not wrong.

[kevin_standlee]

I'm KE6APJ and Lisa is KA5FQA. Back when there were five classes instead of three, she took the Advanced test and passed it, and then the Extra, and ended up passing the code test as well and the higher level (it was one fee to take all of the tests at one sitting) and thus jumped straight from General to Extra. She decided to keep her original call, even though the phonetic version of it (Kilo-Alpha-Five-Foxtrot-Quebec-Alpha) does not roll off the tongue the way Kilo-Echo-Six-Alpha-Papa-Juliet does.

[solarbird]

Either of you still active at all? Once I get an HF rig it'd be fun to try to try contact on that ^_^

[kevin_standlee]

Lisa is, although she needs to do repairs on her antennas. She's considering putting up a bigger one in the East Lot.

I only use my 2m radio sometimes at conventions, or when she and I are convoying, or when I was laid up in bed and she was out in her travel trailer. She put a radio within reach and told me to call her if she needed anything and she'd come running. I never needed to do so, but it was comforting to have it.

[gwydion]

Good for you!!

I still remember my dad's old license number as he would do a little sign off thing that included it back in the day.

We moved to a place where the reception was bad when I started high school, so he gradually gave up on it, but he had a lot of fun with it for years before that. (I think it was the weird geography plus extra bad sun spots, so it stopped being fun).

[solarbird]

I'm in a Bad Geography location myself, so I may get to have the adventures of antenna building. We own up to the top of the hill so it is actually practical... at least to a degree xD