収束ゾーンでのライフ: Life in the Convergence Zone

Let’s talk being able to talk when internet and cell phone service both go down

2026-05-22T02:45:02Z

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot for the last year plus, and with the EFF coming out a number of days ago and strongly encouraging other people to think about it too, I thought it would be a good time to share my findings with all of you.

So here are three decent ways to have communications that keep working when both the internet AND cellphone networks go down.

1: AMATEUR RADIO, a.k.a. HAM Radio
the most capable but with the biggest barrier to entry

THE GOOD: Longest range. Most flexible. Most capable.
THE BAD: Difficult license. Relatively expensive equipment. Technically difficult. Unencrypted.
THE COST: Highest of the three options here. Testing and licensing fees alone cost as much as the other options.

This isn’t going to be an option for most of you because you’re going to have to make time to study, take the qualifying exam to get a license (I’m KK7ZLU if you have one), purchase that license, then purchase a radio and antenna(s) you need and yes those are separate, and get it all set up if you want long-range communications.

On the plus side, this is filled with people who already know what they’re doing. So if you’re good at tests and have the money and time to take all the steps? Great! Please do it! The more the merrier.

2: FRS AND/OR GMRS RADIO
surprisingly capable least-effort handheld radios

THE GOOD: REAL easy to get started, particularly FRS. GMRS can be leveraged to extend range. Trivially easy to use.
THE BAD: GMRS requires a license, but there’s no test and it’s trivial to get. Unencrypted.
THE COST: Probably the cheapest option. You can buy three-packs of FRS radios for like $60 and they’re fine. GMRS radios are more expensive, how much depends upon how powerful a radio you buy.

Okay, so, you want a modern walkie-talkie, and not junk? Something with some range? And maybe with a base station that sits in your house or car? But you don’t want to have to study for a license examination?

Welcome to the overlapping worlds of FRS and GMRS.

FRS (‘Family Radio Service’) and GMRS (‘General Mobile Radio Service’) are two separate but very compatible radio standards. The radios – typically hand-held – have numbered channels, many of which are used by both kinds of radio. By using them together, you improve both.

Using them is very simple: pick a channel, push the button to talk, then let off the button and listen for a reply. Done.

So: how are they different?

First, GMRS radios are much more powerful – and so longer-range – than FRS radios.

Second, GMRS radios can use “repeaters,” which are automated radios that can pick up your signals and resend them over a much larger area. I can from home talk to people across much of western Washington State because of these repeaters.

Third, Because of these two features, GMRS radios require a license, whereas FRS radios do not. But there is NO test for this license. No studying, no prep, no examination. You just buy one online, and you can do it tonight if you want. Once you have bought the license, your whole family can use it. It costs $35 for 10 years. (I’m WSLT671.)

By contrast, FRS radios can be used by literally anyone, INCLUDING SMALL CHILDREN. There are several families around here who have bought sets of FRS radios for their kids. I know this because I pick them up all the time on my GMRS base station. It’s like hearing neighbour kids play over the fence or down the block.

So how does using them together improve both?

In general, GMRS licensees have more technical leeway than FRS users. FRS radios have small, simple antennas you are not allowed to modify, which limits their range. With GMRS radios, you can buy – or even make – much better antennas.

Between the better antennas and the higher power, having GMRS on one end of any conversation extends the effective range of the FRS radios you’re talking to. Using GMRS on shared channels lets you both hear and talk to FRS users from further away.

E.g., in hilly terrain, you’ll be lucky to get one and a half to two miles with FRS alone. But with GMRS on one end and FRS on the other, you can get eight miles or more even in bad conditions. Under ideal conditions, 30 miles is not impossible. Two FRS users may not be able to talk to each other at the same time at those sorts of distances, but if they can both talk to the GMRS station, the GMRS user can pass messages along.

In short: having a GMRS radio in the mix makes FRS radios better, extending their range, sometimes dramatically, which means fewer licenses, cheaper radios, and better access in the short run.

Finally:

3: TEXT OVER RADIO
LoRa digital text radios

THE GOOD: No license of any kind. The longest range of anything without a license. Messages are encrypted. Text-based, so more comfortable for some. Public and private texting, with restricted-access channels. Tremendous range with repeaters – CascadiaMesh extends from the southern Oregon border up through Kamloops and northern Vancouver Island.
THE BAD: Text only. Very new, so very much in flux. There are two common communications standards and applications to go along with them: MeshCore and Meshtastic. And they are NOT compatible – they do NOT talk to each other – which means different areas are settling on one or the other. Documentation for setup is mid and usability is “yep, sure is for nerds,” a comment which I’m told is also for nerds. What that means is that getting set up and using it may dismay some people, but will particularly dismay the nontechnical who will absolutely need handholding.
THE COST: Middle ground, closer to the cheaper end. If you use a companion device with an existing tablet, cell phone, or computer, think $60 for each. You may be able to make your own if you’re that kind of person, though that’s only ever really worth it for repeaters.

LoRa is a kind of digital two-way radio being used here for texts. If you want to be able to text across long distances when both the internet and cell phones are down, this is a good way to do it, as long as everyone involved has LoRa devices. (LoRa texting does NOT work with regular cell phone texting, in the same way that Discord doesn’t work with it either. It is an entirely separate thing.)

There are LoRa devices that bundle all the functionality into one piece of equipment, and also LoRa “companion” devices with LoRA transmitters inside which work with software on a computer, phone, or tablet.

An example of a dedicated device is the LilyGo T-Deck. If you remember Blackberry devices, it looks like a Blackberry device. But instead of using cell phone services or the internet, it’s just directly talking over radio. No cell service, no internet: just radio.

An example of a “companion” device is the WishMesh Tag. It’s a rectangle about the size of a debit card, but thicker. If you turn its GPS receivers off, it’ll run a solid four, maybe five days on a single charge. You connect your phone, tablet, or computer to it via bluetooth using special software (the previously-mentioned MeshCore or Meshtastic) and run the accompanying app to send and receive encrypted text messages with individuals or groups.

Again: even though it can work on a cell phone, NONE OF THIS REQUIRES INTERNET OR CELL SERVICE. The “phone” isn’t being used as a cellphone here, it’s being used as a small computer that has bluetooth.

In much of the US, the most commonly used software is Meshtastic. Here in Cascadia, MeshCore (download at https://meshcore.io ) is the standard, and it is a very large area network. It seems to work better than Meshtastic does in our mountainous geography, which is why everyone switched.

Both are open source, although closed-source/commercial versions also exist.

Unfortunately, as above, the two packages don’t cross-communicate! So you want to find out what’s most common in your area and use that one, whatever it happens to be.

What do I recommend? Glad you asked.

Being me, I’ve got all three options listed here up and running. I’m just like that; if I can have a contingency plan, I will have a contingency plan; my noise in fiction about how “Sombra always has a plan” is straight-up me.

But that’s not the answer you’re looking for. The answer really depends upon what people are already using around you, because it’s easier to join an existing network than make a new one. But if you’re somewhere all three are active, or somewhere none of them are active, my answer is conditional:

If you’re working with people who have no technical background AND you don’t care about encryption, then option two, GMRS/FRS radios.
If you’re dealing with people who like new digital toys OR you care about encryption, then option three, LoRa radio text. You can even set up your own repeaters just about as easily as you can set up a companion device. Seeed makes a repeater that comes with an onboard solar panel and is as close to set-up-and-forget as you’re going to get. As things like this go, they’re not very expensive, and the battery life is generally kind of insane. They sip power, not guzzle it.

So basically, now’s a real good time to reach out to the kind of people you’d want to be able to reach regardless. Get a conversation going amongst the willing and interested, settle amongst yourselves on at least one of these, then set up and actually use it until you know it works and you’re comfortable with how it works.

After all – you never know what kind of emergency might happen, or when. And the time to be ready is beforehand, not during… when you won’t have the time to get comfortable with anything.

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Tell the FCC: queer rep on TV should not have a warning label

2026-05-21T15:25:05Z

Fundamentalists and christofascists - the same thing at this point, of course - controlling the FCC are moving a rule to require warning labels on TV shows with non-gender-binary themes or characters. For now, they're talking about it as trans and nonbinary people, but as we all know or should know, they consider every woman not a tradwife to be "trans" to one degree or another, and I don't think I should have to put out a "yes, this can affect you personally too" about themes.

Fortunately, Shitstain's numbers are so far in the toilet that they're still responding to public pressure, so you - yes, that's you - need to write in opposition to this particular nightmare, and do it before the weekend.

This weekend's a holiday, so it's best to take care of it today. People tend to forget things on the Friday before.

Here's GLAAD's writeup about it, where they help with an outline of the kinds of things you can say. They, like I, remind you to use your own words - don't just copy and paste, that'll get your comment ignored.

If you don't need their help, here's a direct link to the comment form.

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Maps Release: Greater Northshore Bike Connector, MEGAMAP 2.1.1

2026-05-16T18:05:12Z

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.1.1 – 15 May 2026 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.1.1.

If you’re on a pre-2.1 map, 2.1 was massive, filling in large swaths in the south end and you want this update to catch up.

If you’re on 2.1 already, this is a minor update unless you’re in Newcastle, where by percentage the new bike lane openings are a big deal since not much exists down there. In Seattle, there are also new facilities connecting Broad Street in front of the Space Needle to 4th Ave and the rest of the network, which is a long-awaited connection finally here.

If you’re only using the Greater Northshore map in particular, you have no real reason to update with this release. The CKC is still closed at 85th and will be at least until June. Updating that text to note the slightly-extended construction time is the only change, so you can wait ’til 2.1.2, when you will have reason to update.

2.1.1-specific changes:

ADDED: Newly-opened protected bike lane along Broad Street in front of the Space Needle all the way to the 4th Ave downtown bike corridor. (MEGAMAP only)
ADDED: A missing short bike lane on Broad Street from Elliot Ave to Elliot Bay Trail (northwest side only) has been added ot the map. (MEGAMAP only)
ADDED: T-033 Phase II in Newcastle, which completes the eastbound bike lane on May Creek Park Drive east from the roundabout. Westbound got a sharrow, but no lane. (MEGAMAP only)
CHANGED: The CKC closure-with-difficult-detours is extended at least through the end of May, and may (may!) go into June. Warning flag modified to note this. (Both maps)

Particular thanks to Shawn Wilsher/@sdwilsh@social.ridetrans.it for photos confirming the new Seattle bike lanes being open.

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get bonus map variants, like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and this month I’m throwing them an all-cautions-removed 0% compression version of the MEGAMAP to see whether people like that. Plus, I can be open to requests.

Regardless – enjoy biking!

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“Biological reality”

2026-05-15T16:49:23Z

The christofascists sure like to talk about “biological reality,” particularly lately. It’s stupid and meaningless, particularly given how much they hate science, but wow, do they like to whip that shit out against trans people when they think they can get away with it.

It’s not just against trans people, though. It slithers out eventually to any class of people they want to beat down as either inferior or eliminate entirely – lesbians and gays, women, anyone not white – it’s all “biological reality” sooner or later, their self-proclaimed “biological” superiority giving them the right to do horrible things to the rest of us.

Of course, their “biological reality” is always – always, never forget it – a stack of blithering bullshit sorted to suit whatever fascist political agenda they want to serve at the moment. None of it’s in good faith, so don’t treat it like it is. If they believed in biological reality – in biological science – they wouldn’t be a bunch of fucking vaccine deniers. They’d be all over vaccination, and yet, surprise! They’re not!

“Biological reality.” Their use of the phrase genuinely disgusts me.

Anyway, I was thinking about this, and came up with a teardown rant. Next time some fash brings their “biological reality” shit up as an attack on trans people, maybe try some variation of it.

You want to talk biological reality? Are you sure? Is that what you want to embrace?

Because great. Let’s talk biological reality.

Biological reality is that you are an animal. A mammal, of the clade of the great apes, no different from a chimpanzee, and very little different from a dog or a cat. Take any decent college course in anatomical biology and you will see every part of the biologically real you in every creature you dissect from the flatworm on up.

Biological reality is that you are a short-lived animal in the life of this world, and even shorter in the life of the universe. You were born through an accident of complicated chemistry to live briefly and then die, ending forever, and that’s it. You have no more soul – no more immortal part – than does a cockroach, and in the long term will leave exactly as much behind.

Biological reality is that you. are. an. animal. like. every. other. animal., and not one iota more.

So if you want to embrace biological reality, fucking do it, you clown, you fool, you coward. Because that is what you are embracing, because that is the actual biological reality. And you are no more made in the image of God than is a scarab, the dung beetle the ancient Egyptians thought holy.

But you won’t do that. You won’t embrace actual ‘biological reality.’ You can’t.

I don’t even mind that you can’t. I don’t mind that you don’t.

But my gods, I loathe the pretence – the filthy, disgraceful lie – that you do, and that you only pretend to do it as a weapon against others. You only claim you care about science when you think it’s a weapon you can use to hurt.

In my head, I deliver it hot; you’d probably want to present it cooler, particularly if you’re not in person and can’t get hot yourself, which is important for hot deliveries. Maybe deliver it cold. Maybe very cold. It’s up to you, by which I mean do not quote it, make it your own.

Just whatever you do, don’t deliver it nicely. Nice is the opposite of the point. Be mean, because there is no “nice” response to the lie of “biological reality.”

If that doesn’t work for you, maybe just use the vaccination thing. That’s easier, I suppose. But it’s also less… direct. Less personal. And it leaves them a little room, where “YOU. ARE. AN. ANIMAL.” doesn’t leave any.

These fuckers want to talk about “biological reality?” Fine.

Let ’em have it.

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May 1st General Strike

2026-04-30T23:06:40Z

May Day Participation Guide

One-day general strike, via Indivisible.

You in?

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little more than a reading list (AI)

2026-04-07T16:21:02Z

Here, two papers and two articles, all about AI, all I think better than most:

Researchers at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania are proposing an extended model of cognition as a way of measuring and studying “cognitive surrender,” the regular handoff of cognition to LLM models. It’s long but if you’ve got the patience, it’s here. I didn’t see much in the way of surprises, but it does provide an interesting framework for analysis.

One not-emphasised takeaway is that once again, the human intervention for wrong LLM responses model is shit. It’s not emphasised because that’s not the point of their paper – they’re demonstrating their model as an explanative/conceptual framework – but it’s still there.

Scientific American writes about a study showing that AI outputs tend to sway users’ beliefs, even when users are told about biases built into the model. As many – including me – have said many times before, this is absolutely part of the point of AI, particularly but not just for people like Elon Musk. But it’s good to see numbers on it.

Combine study two with study one and you see why the tech brogliarchs so eager to turn thinking into something they sell you. They don’t want to make your life easier, they want to make you pay to think like them. Or, as Karl Bode put it a few months ago, “The problem with AI isn’t going to be Skynet. It’s going to be amoral extraction class assholes applying half-cooked automation at scale onto deeply broken sectors in exploitative ways in a country too corrupt to have functioning regulators.”

Finally, give a look of the narrowly-focused (to coding) but still worthwhile essay, “I used AI. It worked. I hated it.” It strikes me that much of what he hated about it are what people who actually want to be managers like, which explains so very, very much, doesn’t it?

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Washington State eBike rebate programme 2026 is GO

2026-04-06T22:54:46Z

Washington State’s statewide eBike rebate applications are open! Instead of one big random selection like last year, it’ll be spaced out monthly. You do have to re-register for this year, but only the first time – after that you’re eligible for every drawing.

I can’t recommend a good ebike enough. Seriously. Second photo is what I biked home with on Sunday:

Go read Seattle Bike Blog for all the deets. But if you have any interest in biking again and live in a super-hilly area like me? Again: can’t recommend it enough. There are three-wheelers, there are cargo eBikes (so you don’t have to roll your own trailer like I did), there are four-wheelers, there are recumbents. There are bikes with different levels of assist – I have the lowest kind, a Grade 1, assist-only and a completely normal bike when it’s off, and it’s all Anna and I need.

Anyway, get into the drawing. If nothing else, as multiple people told me on Sunday – it’s a hell of a good way to beat gas prices. Neither Anna nor I have cared what gas costs in years, and you can know the joy of not giving a fuck about it either, too.

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(smoke detectors) Okay, let’s write this down to think it though

2026-03-25T23:35:11Z

The latest smoke detector to howl pointlessly into the night sends out 11.3V DC onto the signal pin when triggered but running off batteries. I suspect that’s 12V nominal, and it probably delivers 12V when operating on AC power.

Most importantly, it’s not like… 500mv. Or AC. Or complicated. It’s plain, simple DC.

When acting as a non-reporting satellite node, it triggers when receiving 4V DC on the signal pin (4.0 exactly), and that voltage is polarity sensitive. -4V doesn’t trigger the alarm.

Checking for DC on the signal line, I get functionally nothing. 20ma DC at most, and even that’s something I’m picking up out of noise floor shift rather than direct measurement.

(Yes, I checked for AC as well. Still functionally nothing.)

My thought was that if the signal line was somehow floating in whole number volts (for whatever reason) than maybe somehow the right RF noise could kick it over.

The problem with that is that I can now also confirm that non-detecting units go off exactly as long as a detecting device keeps saying it’s detecting by putting voltage on the signal line. If that voltage goes away, so do the satellite alarms – and immediately.

And that’s not what happens. We have to manually intervene and shut the alarms off ourselves.

The reason I paid meaningfully more than baseline for this particular set is that they report exactly which detector went off and why. That way, if it were the signal line somehow triggering the alarms, none of them would claim to be the originating unit; they’d all report it came from the signal backbone.

But they don’t. There’s always a unit claiming to be the active detector and it’s always smoke (and there is never actually smoke), and none of them shut up until we shut off that unit, which sometimes seems to require removing it from power.

So today’s afternoon check was basically just another way of confirming what we already knew, and I guess I’ve done that now, but…

All that does is get us right back to where we started, which is, “we have alarm after alarm after alarm of different makes, methods (ionisation, photodetector), and models which just in this house are determined to go off randomly, usually but not always at night, for absolutely no detectable fucking reason, and then pass self-test just fine afterwards.”

And no, regular cleaning – even weekly cleaning – does not help. I do all the things. None of it stops the problem.

If you’re new to this adventure, I have heard this exact same story from many other people at this point – though nobody I’ve talked to has said they’ve literally taken metres to the signal wires to verify that way.

Regardless, I know it is not just us.

What I’ve been told from others who deal with this is to RMA individual units that trigger randomly one at a time until you end up with a set that doesn’t. And I guess that’s what I’m gonna do, but

holy shit, team

holy shit

this is the opposite of fire safety

this is the opposite of how anything like this should ever work, I mean

what if all the RMAs are getting you are a set that won’t go off even when they should?

but whelp

guess i’m gonna find out

’cause this sure ain’t workin’.

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the barbarians in chief

2026-03-21T18:16:08Z

Pete Hegseth either has no idea what a pocket square is and/or what it’s for, or he uses the American flag as facial tissue, for blowing his nose. You might point this out to any flag patriots who still worship the shitstain and his minions:

Normally, I probably wouldn’t bother with something this stupid and petty, but they’re trying so hard – so hard – to pretend to be old money and yet have no fucking idea what any of the symbolism means that this basically became a small but perfect snapshot of the sick delusional fraud encompassing literally every aspect of their worthless, filthy lives.

There are nearly infinite reasons to want to punch this cretin directly in the face the moment you see him, this is merely one of many.

But it’s just so completely on the nose, isn’t it?

Just like someone’s fist should be.

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Maps Release: Greater Northshore Bike Connector, MEGAMAP 2.0.8

2026-02-14T07:48:19Z

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.0.8 – 14 February 2026 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.0.8.

This release is all about warnings updates. There’s no new infrastructure here but there are some closure/construction updates, the most important being temporary closure of Burke-Gilman in Kenmore, with a detour onto a car street between 61st Ave NE and 65th Ave NE. Pedestrians have to go up to Bothell Way.

Here’s the complete changes list:

WARNING: Burke-Gilman CLOSURE in Kenmore for emergency repairs. They aren’t saying what, but it’s almost certainly hillside stabilisation where they piled up highway legos a few months ago. Between 61st and 65th Aves NE, February 16-20. (Both maps)
WARNING: I should’ve added this already, but I’ve now added caution flags on 125th NE in Seattle showing the rework in progress through November 2026. This is a massive project and will be a massive upgrade. (Both maps)
WARNING: Kirkland’s sewer line repair work still hasn’t let the southern Central Kirkland Connector reopen, and the latest word is end of February. Notice updated to reflect that. (MEGAMAP only)
REMOVED WARNING: EastRail Trail South temporary closure in Renton is over, so the warning has been removed. (MEGAMAP only)
REMOVED WARNING: Final work on the extended bike lanes of NE 124th in Kirkland wrapped up, so that warning has been removed. (Both maps)

All permalinks continue to work.

Regardless – enjoy biking!

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Elon Musk and the Howard Hughes Speedrun

2026-02-03T17:11:03Z

It is time to declare Elon Musk’s Howard Hughes Speedrun complete? Or is there another level? I’m genuinely not sure. After all, he’s not sitting in a dark hotel room surrounded by jars of his own urine while typing with long, long, long fingernails – as far as we know – but this is some serious crazy and you are not ready for it.

Here’s an actual statement Elon Musk actually made on Monday:

“[The merger of xAI into SpaceX] marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI’s mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!” Musk said.
Reuters, Archive.today

Emphasis added.

There aren’t words to describe how absolutely batshit insane this is. It’s a degree of psychosis and dissociation from reality that can’t – really shouldn’t – even be discussed rationally. It’s just… so long, rational thought! It’s the kind of thing I’d make up to describe how fucking impossible something was, so I don’t even know what I’d compare it to. Building a machine that makes it rain meatballs is more possible than this.

Why Tesla isn’t seeking zero in after-hours, I can’t tell you. Instead, it was up $3.41 at the end of aftermarket trading. Maybe by the time this goes up, repercussions will have hit. I don’t know. I can’t know, given that I’m writing this in the past of you, the reader, before Tuesday morning’s market opening. But…

Holy hell, team. I’m thinking it might be time to call it. It might be time to say Howard Hughes Speedrun complete.

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torment matrix, part 23942

2026-02-01T07:07:59Z

Honest to shit the rate at which writing written as warning is turning into writing-as-instruction manual is really starting to fuck with my head right here:

Anthropic shredded millions of physical books to train its Claude AI model — and new documents suggest that it was well aware of just how bad it would look if anyone found out.

I literally read this short story in… I think it was Asimov’s? Could’ve been Analog but I think it was Asimov’s. Circa 1992 or something. Don’t remember much of anything about it other than they were training an AI by shredding and destroying library after library and it was a huge deal.

That was it, though. That was the entire plot.

Kinda wish these fuckers would, idk, watch The Black Hole and ride a giant spaceship into an event horizon right about now, don’t you?

i mean

that’d be good

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Fascists building a database and rubbing noses in it

2026-01-23T21:08:07Z

The ICE fascist agent acknowledges her taking video is legal, doesn’t pretend she’s in the way, takes her photo and license plate information for their “nice little database” and declares her to be a domestic terrorist. Micah’s commentary is good, which is why I’m including it.

Klippenstein’s sources say the database is real, and that the fascist agent wasn’t supposed to talk about it. As some of us said, the “war on terror” was always going to be a war on Americans at home, and here it is.

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what’s permuting itself around in my head, part two: the election

2026-01-16T17:04:10Z

Okay, let’s see if I can get this together, shall we? Tried on Tuesday night, but I was too tired from work and the Tesla Takedown Tuesday protest.

Here’s a pic of one section, taken from across the street, call it “proof of fuck you, Elon”:

It may not seem immediately related, but naturally, it all is.

Now. Where. Were. We? Ah yes, the 2026 elections that Trump knows the Republicans are going to lose, and lose badly. It’d take a lot to lose the Senate, but it’s possible, and he – and his MAGA movement – do not give up power voluntarily.

In part one, I provided a couple of action items, of things you can be doing; in this one, I can be more specific about what needs to happen and when.

Before we can get into the meat of that, though, we have to talk about something else: timelines.

This writeup is something like the timeline I think we can expect if there are no other major events that allow him to reach his and his administration’s MAGA goal of declaring insurrection and imposing martial law, either de facto or de jure, through other means, like those he’s trying right now in Minnesota.

In reality, all these potential timelines are intertwined, affecting each other directly and indirectly. But if I’m going to unwind them from each other enough to make them clear to other people, I have to leave those connections out. It’s not really valid to leave them out; it’s just necessary for illustrative purposes.

It also assumes that projections as we have now continue, that the polls don’t swing the other way, that the 86% of people who oppose his plan to attack Greenland suddenly decide it’s actually a good idea, that everybody decides Federal violence against Americans is good actually, that just enough people of colour decide white nationalism is basically okay because they’ll be the exception (spoiler: they won’t be the exception), and so on. Americans are stupid motherfuckers with a shorter memory span than mayflies, so I don’t rule it out. But let’s say that he remains widely hated.

With that framing set, let’s get into the election itself. Most of this will seem awfully familiar to you if you paid attention in 2020; it’s not a new plan. It has some new details, but the broad strokes are identical.

First, Trump will spend as much time as he can afford in 2026 working to discredit the elections in advance. He’s already been doing this, attacking blue states as corrupt, as fraudulent, and attacking mail-in and machine-counted votes. He says he wants to lead a campaign to eliminate both, but particularly vote by mail.

(The interesting part of his attacks on machine counting is that every state uses machine counting, because it’s better! It is straight up better and more accurate. What’s important is to keep paper originals for hand-counting in the event of any necessary recounts, and most states have provisions for that, both machine and, if close enough, by multiply-checked hand counting, which is where you do get more accurate than machine counts, at the cost of high expense, both in money and in time.

This may be a matter of expanding his – and his administration’s – attacks on voting to all states, even red states, as a general attack on democracy and voting. As demonstrated previously, this is now a white nationalist movement, and white nationalism is by its nature fascist. There is a ruling minority fit to rule over society, and all the rest of society must fall into line or else, and that never ends up a democratic state. It’s just fascism.)

Secondly, he will do everything he can to disrupt the election mechanically, via new pronouncements, new executive orders, new court cases, whatever he and his evil crew can manage. He’s already promised he’ll do this, and for once you can take him on his word. It’ll continue. He’s just lost in court again – against us in particular – with the courts shutting down his attempts to break our electoral system, but he’ll just file something new. He’d shut them down entirely if he could – he’s out there saying so – but I don’t think he’ll be able to manage that.

Finally, as votes come in, he will attack slow-counting states (like the Cascadian states, but not just) demanding that their voting and/or counting stop as soon as he and his ruling clique see the best sub-count of results they think they’re likely to see. Given voting patterns, that will mean stops so early that not even votes even cast on the day of the election would be counted.

States will, naturally, ignore this and continue counting.

At that point, his administration will condemn the results as fraudulent. Will there be legal cases? One assumes there will be legal cases. The bigger question is whether there will be ballot seizures by Federal agencies, and given what’s happening with the murder of Renee Good, it seems likely. Besides, they tried some of that in 2020; they will try it again.

Frankly, if you’re reading this, you lived through the last coup attempt and you already know how all this works. The point of the lies isn’t to convince anyone; the point is to keep the lies swirling and the pot stirring so everyone involved or willing to go along keeps pretending the lies about the elections are genuine concerns, or at least worth considering.

Then: remember false electors?

Remember all those fake “alternate slate” electors? Remember those?

Remember how some of them tried to show up in DC to get counted in place of the real ones? Some of them got arrested. Some of them got charged, some of them got convicted, for fraud.

Let’s talk about disputed representation, shall we?

They won’t actually be under dispute. Not in reality. The results will have been announced weeks before, along with the results of many recounts. Court cases will likely have been cleared away, hopefully with some amount of compliance to the law involved.

But all that was true in 2020, and that didn’t stop Trump from trying anyway. He and Vance and Miller and the whole rotten crew will say they’re disputed, and may even try to pretend they mean it.

Since the Senate – not the House – officially opens the new Congress, let’s look there first.

The Senate opens the new Congress because it is the continuing body, with two thirds of its membership returning. It doesn’t have to adopt rules; it can move into action very quickly.

One of the first acts will be for Republican Secretary of the Senate Jackie Barber to receive election certificates from any and all new Senators, which will then be announced by…

…President of the Senate and Vice President of the United States J.D. Vance.

I can’t speak to the Honourable Jackie Barber, but I can most definitely say that unlike Mike Pence, J.D. Vance is fully onboard with these projects. He will not hesitate to perpetrate the treasonous fraud should they decide to go with it.

Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, there are no returning officers, and the VP plays no role. Instead, the duty of receiving the certificates of election, announcing the new Representatives, and calling the House to order lies with the previous Clerk of the House. Or, if they’re not available, the previous House’s Sergent-at-Arms.

Meet the Honourable Kevin McCumber, Republican, and Clerk of the House. Meet the Honourable William McFarland, Sergent-at-Arms, wielder of the Mace of the Republic, appointed by Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Republican) at the start of this current Congress.

McFarland has seen some shit. I have some doubt as to whether he’d go along. I don’t know enough about McCumber to have any guesses. But I do know that either way, recognition of new Representatives is all in Republican hands.

So. It’s a simple game for four players. I stress again: none of this is legal. It is barely pretending to be legal, it’s a hypothetical plan for an illegal coup with just enough pretence at legality to let people who want to believe in it go ahead and say they believe in it. It’s not about a plausible legality at any point; it’s just about permission to pretend that it’s legal.

Trump et al declare the elections disputed or just fraudulent, and either presses still-open court cases or files new ones in the days before January 3rd.

Citing open cases and/or “clear election fraud,” J.D. Vance either recognises “alternate slate” Senators or simply refuses to recognise any new Senators from “disputed” states, as Mike Pence was supposed to either recognise the fraudulent electors or declare an impasse, and not allow “either slate” from “disputed” states to be counted. And so, the Senate is in session, with a quorum and a Republican supermajority – along with, possibly, several empty seats.

Kevin McCumber – or a replacement we haven’t met yet, still to be appointed – does the same dance in the House. If Kevin gets swapped out late in the year, I would just go ahead and assume that’s for election rejection purposes and that the coup is on.

Regardless, if the House does not have quorum, it cannot do business, so that would be one play. Another play would be to seat false Representatives with a Republican supermajority, seating those few Democrats elected from heavily-jerrymandered Republican states as “fairly elected,” along with the false Republican representatives from Democratic states.

It is quite possible that – citing the arrests of some “alternate slate” electors in 2021 – Trump orders the arrest of the actually-elected Senators and Representatives.

Protests erupt en masse; Trump declares an insurrection, invokes the Insurrection Act, enacts martial law, and we get to see whether the US Army will refuse illegal orders to occupy several American states and oppress the citizenry in the face of a coup, and the last remnants of the old Republic will have been swept away.

…

Christ, this all sounds so stupid, doesn’t it? It sounds like such conspiracy theory bullshit. But I remind myself and you both that this was the 2020-2021 plan, and they almost pulled it off. With someone like J.D. “Couchfucker” Vance in place of Mike Pence, you know the elector count would’ve stalled out. It’s not even a question.

So as thick, as just fucking dumb as all this is…

…we have to be ready for it. At very least, we have to be watching very carefully for the same progress steps as were clearly visible last time. Building up to the January 6th coup attempt was largely visible. I was warning neighbours, who were not really believing me until it happened. I doubt it will be much different this time.

We have to be ready for a national, comprehensive protest if this goes down. A walkout of everyone, on every level. Absolutely nothing can be allowed to be done; no work, no school, no optional spending, no nothing. Pay your rent if you must, but don’t buy anything.

A lot of leftists and posers keep going “general strike when?” THIS IS WHEN, and the time to prep to pull it off is now.

Demanding “general strike now!” as in right now, as I write this, with no prep and no coordination which is so obviously a recipe for failure that at this point I presume they’re opposition ops, roleplayers, or useful idiots. This won’t be some kind of holiday. You will have a new, unpaid job: marching in the streets demanding removal of the dictator. It will not be safe, but it’ll be your new temporary career – as well as mine – despite that. You need to have food stocked up in advance, so you don’t have to worry about bank cards not working. You may need to have water stocked up, but hopefully not. You need to be ready to help people who haven’t prepped for fucking anything because it’s not real until it happens to them. And you need to have communications and networks set up, preferably ones that don’t rely on the internet.

FRS radios, which do not require a license, would be good purchases right about now. Just for one example. Get a HAM license, if you can; the technician license is not particularly difficult. And don’t just buy shit and stick it in a drawer, either. Know how they work. Get used to using them in advance.

But it can’t be just up to individuals self-organising; that’s not enough. States have to be ready for this possibility. States will have to protect their citizens; despite Trumpist protestations, they are not “extensions” of the Federal government. Legally, in theory, it’s the states which are ultimately sovereign; states can dissolve the Federal government without its permission. It’s right there in the Constitution.

That dissolution won’t happen here, not de jure (by law), but it could happen de facto (in reality) for a little while, or maybe a lotta while, depending upon how badly everything goes in this event. States must be ready to act both on their own and in alliance to protect themselves, and protect us, while we all work to protect each other.

Cascadia, in short, may be a necessary reality forced upon us. The New England Confederation may rise from the ashes of history. California may, in fact, über alles for a while – in reality, if not, of course, in name.

If Trump and Vance and Miller et al do this, it’s not just that it will get ugly, it’s that it has to get ugly in order to reverse it.

In some small ways, we’re already there. We’re getting tastes of it now. They’re small samples, limited, but still scaling to the tongue. Minnesota, in particular, is right now having to protect its citizens from the Federal government, which is threatening retaliation and the Insurgency Act in return.

Support Minnesota, help them, participate in walkouts, participate in protests, do whatever is needed, because if we get there, the full-bore version – the version Trump and Miller and Vance and Musk and the TESCREAL crowd so desperately want – will be much, much worse.

All this could’ve been prevented. But we ran out of “easy” ways to defeat it a year and a half ago, having pulled a semi-easy way back out of the fire via the seemingly impossible feat of getting Joe Biden elected President, and defeating Trump’s first coup attempt. We ran out of options to stop it from ever happening almost 20 years ago, in 2007, when the Democrats gave Bush II a pass on his illegal torture regime. We ran out of easy ways to stop this crisis from even starting in 1998-1999, when Christian Fundamentalist political culture took over GOP political culture at the ground level and the money people could not be convinced this was a really, really bad idea despite how many low-level roles the fundies chose to fill.

We no longer have “easy” ways, and we no longer have “good” outcomes. Too much damage has been too long done. What we have instead of “easy” and “good” is hard work, salvage, and, if we’re lucky, opportunities to rebuild.

But we do still have those. By some miracle – and by a lot of hard work by some of us – we still have that much.

If Trump, Vance, Miller, and the rest of the traitors try this, though, and we aren’t ready – we won’t even have that.

So get to work. Be ready.

And be good.

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what’s permuting itself around in my head, part one:

2026-01-13T17:01:01Z

I never got a chance to write an article about how much worse 2026 is going to be than 2025; it all got going with Trump’s invasion of Venezuela literally as I was getting to write it all out. But before I could, well, here we were, already ass-deep in it.

Today, I wanted to talk about subverting this year’s elections – a work already in progress – but we should probably start with what’s most loudly and visibly in front of us this week before going into that.

The first thing you have to remember – the first thing you have to keep in mind – is that the US Government is now a white nationalist government. Straight up. Little hedging or pretence remains; it’s a white nationalist government, and don’t try to tell me otherwise when the Shitweasel is openly condemning the civil rights movement and official US government accounts are openly sending out white nationalist propaganda and promoting white nationalist goals.

Which they are, if you missed it over new year’s.

Like here, for example, where the Department of Homeland Security posted how peaceful and great America would be after 100 million deportations of people from the “third world.”

There aren’t 100 million immigrants at all in the United States, much less ones from the “third world.” But if you take all immigrants (of all races) and all non-white American citizens, and yes, that includes those who have citizenship by by birth and add those numbers up…

…that’s right about 100,000,000.

They know that, of course. So given that, I have to assume that’s who they’re saying to get rid of. Everyone not white and every immigrant.

They’re literally propagandising for a mass ethnic purge of 100,000,000 people, most of whom are US citizens of colour.

Elon Musk has become even more openly white nationalist, by the way. The movement isn’t even pretending otherwise anymore.

(As an aside, why is anyone still on X? Particularly given all this? Why? Was it not obvious enough before? How about now that it’s an AI child porn generation site? Is that obvious enough? Seriously – WHY IS ANYONE STILL THERE?! If you are, get the fuck off X. For good. Now. I’m sick of excuses, get off of X, right the fuck now. If you have followers you care about, lead them off too. Now.)

But I digress.

The DHS “X” account is an official US government account owned and maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, which runs ICE. It’s not some unofficial fan club, it’s literally the US government in control of it, and they’re posting white nationalist propaganda.

The “100 million” post is only one example of such propaganda; there are many others. Not only have they not taken down this particular piece of white nationalist propaganda, when I started writing this, it was still pinned to the top of the account. They weren’t hiding it, they were highlighting it.

They’re proud of it. It’s the goddamn goal. They are telling you it’s the goddamn goal. When will people listen?

(This is, by the way, what every single person who didn’t do everything they could to get Harris into the Presidency brought us, and amongst the many things I will never forgive are those people who sneered, jeered, and slandered me, accusing me of being pro-genocide, all for doing what was absolutely necessary to keep literal fascists out of the White House. And so they played saboteur, buying into bullshit, discouraging voting, depressing turnout, and now look where we fucking are.)

But again, I digress. I digress a lot, lately, I admit.

So. As MAGA leadership is white nationalist, DHS is also white nationalist. As DHS is white nationalist, ICE is white nationalist.

Remember again that ICE is DHS’s enforcement arm, their national semi-secret police intended to execute DHS policy. Their street white nationalism is the implementation of the political white nationalism.

One way you can tell is their recruitment of white nationalists, often using literal Klu Klux Klan language. “Defend Your Culture,” which is big in their advertising, was literally a KKK slogan, and the “culture” of the Klan was white supremacy through violence. I assure you, the white supremacists don’t miss it – Proud Boy leadership started telling their membership to sign up months ago, and I promise you that they are, where they can. The people they recruit will be onboard with the agenda.

(See also how the Republican Party’s MAGA wing – when it was only a wing, and not the whole party – gave the Proud Boys a quiet tryout as a militant street action wing, a kind of enforcement brigade without official status. It didn’t work out; the PB were too undisciplined and too independent. This is their solution. Their explicitly political recruitment, targeting the far-right of the GOP base, helps make the connection clear.)

They’re only starting with this purge of actual undocumented people.

Initially moving against undocumented workers – already an expansion after promising to only go after “violent criminals” – they’ve been generating new “illegals” since day one. They’ve been making people applying for refugee status into “illegals,” arresting them as they show up for entry interviews and appointments and court dates. They’re making people here with longstanding legal status “illegals,” breaking promises and revoking already-signed papers, often breaking the law to do so. The leadership are explicitly looking for ways to “de-naturalise” people, and going after the very explicit, very intentional birthright citizenship guaranteed by the US Constitution.

They’re openly setting up the concentration camps they need for such a mass expulsion. They brag about it. They’ve published the structure of how they’ll work.

It is, as it was always intended to be, a mass ethnic purge. It is, to use their word, “wartime” in America. And yes, they will get to citizens, unless we stop them before they can.

As with any such purge, it will be bloody. It already is bloody, of course, with ICE beating down citizens they have no authority to arrest and occasionally just murdering people in the streets. Good was not the first, she was just the most recent, and the first that looked like she could turn up at a MAGA rally. That whiteness is what’s made the difference in popular reaction. But it will get far, far bloodier – which is exactly what MAGA leadership want it to become.

Vance says ICE agents have “absolute immunity,” and are above all state and local laws. That’s not the law and never has been, it’s just fascism. But it’s more specifically giving ICE informal – but clear – permission to do whatever the hell they want, up to and including murder more ‘lesbian bitches‘ like Renee Good, a threat reportedly made by more than one ICE agent this past weekend.

And, as you’d expect once given the go-ahead like that, they’re using their murder of Renee Good to intimidate Americans, threatening citizens with the same kind of violence.

It will not stop in hotspots. Vance also says he wants ICE agents going door to door all across America. They’ve been doing that this past weekend in Minnesota, sweeping through neighbourhoods. Yes, of course they include citizens in that door-to-door, and yes, it’s government terrorism. They don’t care if it’s your property, they don’t care that you’re an American, they threaten to smash down your door if you demand to see a warrant and they threaten you with prosecution if you stand up for your rights.

Do I have an example on video? Of course I do. The terror you see and hear from this American family in their own home is what they want. Listen, you’ll hear them tell the family with infant child that if they make ICE wait for a warrant they’ll smash the door down. Listen, you’ll hear them threaten the family with Federal charges for not letting them in right the fuck now.

But stand your goddamn ground, and have your whistles, and get your neighbourhood out and loud. If you don’t know what the whistles are, find out, and if you hear them, learn to respond. This particular neighbourhood did. And, being mostly cowards, ICE left – for now. But they’ll seethe, and take it out on someone else later.

They want violence, they want fear, they want and have basically received permission to spill blood. None of that is compatible with a republic, but MAGA doesn’t really want that either.

I’m further pretty sure that MAGA leadership does want resistance, however. Underneath it all, it sure seems clear to me that Trump and Vance and Miller et al are salivating to use the Insurrection Act and declare martial law. Trump’s been openly talking about it since his first term, just like he’s talked about how it’d be “good” for America to have a “president for life.” He wants dictatorial power and he wants it bad, because he knows it’s the only way the party survives the 2026 elections, and without the party, he’s vulnerable.

He knows his movement is starting to come apart. He knows everyone not in his movement is done with his shit. So he’s going to do whatever he can, with absolutely no limits, to stay in power. That includes false prosecutions against political opponents, that includes declaring war on allies, that includes declaring war on citizens (as above), and yes, that does include subverting, stealing, or just trying to overturn the 2026 elections.

That last part can’t be surprising, can it? Are we going to pretend it’s a surprise, when he tries? It’s what he did in 2020, and he didn’t go to jail, so why wouldn’t he try it again? It’d only be surprising if he didn’t try. So, I think it’s clear that he will.

I have some thoughts on how it’ll go. You can figure them out for yourself if you paid attention in 2020, because basically it’s the same plan. But this mess of an article is already too damn long, so that’ll have to wait. We’ll call that part two.

And if you’ve made it down this far through this absolute mess of an article, good job. Because holy crow, it is a mess. But that doesn’t make me wrong. Moments in history like this are messy, too.

So get organised and get used to turning out, because all this is going to keep getting worse. If there’s no ICE around, today’s a Tesla Takedown day; you might join an existing protest, or start a new one. I’ll see you again in a couple of days with part two.

Be good out there.

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Weekend protests – SHOW UP

2026-01-10T04:46:03Z

PROTESTS. SATURDAY AND SUNDAY. LOTS OF THEM. SHOW UP.

Here’s a bunch on the Washington State wet side. All over the place, and I do mean all over. Like Tulalip, and Sequim. Don’t get me wrong, I like Sequim, but it is not a big place. Here’s the list. All kinds of times, all kinds of places.

Sundays are further down but this list isn’t in good date order, idk why. So keep scrolling.

I’m sure wherever you are has some too. Pick one and get out there.

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Vance: ICE agents have “absolute immunity” from state laws – including murder

2026-01-08T19:21:36Z

JD Vance said – in response to a reporter asking why the FBI and Federal agencies were blocking Minnesota’s investigation into the ICE agent murder of Renee Nicole Good – that ICE agents have “absolute immunity” from state laws.

This is not law. This is fascism.

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ICE murdered a woman in the streets today. You need to know, and you need to tell others.

2026-01-07T18:31:46Z

ICE shot a woman, believed but not confirmed to be an American and confirmed not to be a target of their raids, to death in the streets today, murdering her. They are lying about it, calling her a terrorist and lying about what happened. Tricia McLaughlin in particular is lying about what happened. ICE and Tricia McLaughlin have lied many times, irrefutably, in the past, about ICE violence; this is yet another time.

There is third-party video. I have reviewed it several times. It matches reported eyewitness descriptions taken at the scene. In it, the ICE agent shoots while fully clear of any vehicle – having in fact stepped back from the vehicle to make room to raise his pistol – as the vehicle is moving away from him. Eyewitnesses say he shot directly into the vehicle, from the side, at a near-right-angle (at first), which matches what can be seen in the video itself.

Here’s one posting. If necessary, I have a copy and can make more copies if needed. I think these’ll be disappeared if we don’t put them enough places.

The fash are building a lie, a “false narrative.” That’s just extra syllables for “lie,” one that they’ll all pretend to believe. Debunk it at every turn.

ICE murdered a woman in the streets today for funsies and because they were mad about it, and now they’re lying about what they did, while this woman is indeed quite dead.

ETA: The original video has been moved behind moderation and is no longer visible without a Bluesky account. This is a different video from a different angle, unfortunately lacking earlier context.

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what to do now

2026-01-05T17:42:20Z

Stop using oil.

That’s it. That’s what to do.

Stop using oil. Stop using natural gas, too. Stop. The sooner you can stop, the better. Do what it takes. I don’t know what that is for any individual – for you – but do it.

I know it’s work. I’m not saying, “here’s the easy no impact thing you can do to feel better about yourself,” I’m saying “this is what you need to do if you want to actually do something,” and those are very different statements. It’s a lift, and it’s a heavy lift, but it’s what to do now.

Being work – being difficult – doesn’t change that it needs to happen. Stopping the Nazis in World War II was a heavy lift too. It was work, it was difficult, and it was very literally very very deadly. Millions of people died. Millions more got fucked up for life. Still needed to happen, just like this still needs to happen now. And both the deaths and the fuckery were going to happen anyway.

So stop using oil.

I started saying this literally decades ago, talking about US adventurism in the Middle East. For the money people – the ones who matter – it was then and is now about oil. You want the US out of the Middle East, do everything you can to stop oil consumption. Starve the beast, and eventually the beast will weaken and die. It’s not fast and it’s not easy and it’s not glamorous, but it’s what will work.

Sure, you can talk about the lunatic fundamentalists who want to start Armageddon and end the world to bring back Jesus – fuck, I hate that typing that out is relevant and important – but without the money people using them as muscle, they’re a bunch of flea-picking determinedly-ignorant dipshits feeling up snakes in strip-mall storefronts. Fuck ’em. The reality is that fossil fuel companies are ass-deep in fascism, and always have been, so:

Stop. Using. Oil.

Internalise that. The problem is oil and the people who extract, refine, and sell it. It’s also natural gas and coal and any other fossil fuel, but mostly, it’s the oil.

Stop using oil.

Hit those goddamn breaks, slow down, and then just. Fucking. Stop. Using. Oil.

Some of that’s easy, some of it’s not, and it’s not fast. Lots of people can tell you ways how, including me, but don’t get me wrong – I’m not a saint on this; our furnace is still natural gas. I want to fix that, and we’re actively stockpiling money to do so, but it’s going to take time. It just is. But we’re actually actively working towards it, and we have been for a while.

Not just at home, either. If things go right at the work I don’t talk about online – ever – we’ll be cutting fossil fuel consumption there by another 91% by late this summer.

Thanks to me.

It’s taken ages. We’ve already cut use by about 77%, thanks again – I stress – to my efforts. This new 91% cut will be 91% of what’s left over after all that. It’ll be a 98% cut from where we started, years ago.

If things go right – and there are supplier questions so it might not go right – we’ll be throwing that switch mid-year. For good. It’ll have been years of effort but we’ll have gone from over two thousand gallons of oil a year to

FUCKING ZERO

…with the remaining 2% being natural gas. (We have a path out of that, as well. But the oil comes first.)

There’s nothing unique about my position in this. My accomplishment can be repeated by others, I am just saying.

The end result of not using oil will be much better than what we have now. Some of the intermediate steps will be improvements, too. Some won’t. Some, people just won’t like. Surveys show Americans want to stop climate change but they also want to keep using gas forever and I’m fucking sorry, but that’s just not how reality works.

Until people internalise that they have to stop using oil, I don’t know how much anything else matters.

Step one is stop using oil. (And natural gas.)

It’s also step 10, step 30, step 3000.

You want to do something?

Stop. Using. Oil.

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what i’m hearing

2026-01-05T10:24:08Z

What I’m hearing – and hopefully it’s wrong, but it’s what I’m hearing – is that Republicans in Congress know that this is all a hellish dictatorial evil nightmare, but that even now, they won’t cross Trump. One or two will, but not many and not enough. I don’t know that it’s true, but maybe it is.

If you have Republican Representatives or Senator(s), it is your job TODAY to make them fear YOU more than they fear HIM.

This is some serious business last chance shit right here, okay?

Get on it. Good luck.

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lids+lids=storage

2026-01-02T20:49:26Z

So I made lids for my Tide laundry detergent lids and since lids+lids=storage the tide lids are now containers (with lids) and people over on Mastodon are surprisingly into this so

I’ve uploaded the lid designs to thingiverse

enjoy lids4lids 😀

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it took me a while to understand, hayao

2025-12-16T17:14:07Z

Meta, the company controlled by babyfash Trump fan Mark Zuckerberg, the board of which thought it was reasonable to support Fascist politicians in the hope of avoiding regulation, and whose Facebook service has or had a “17-strike” policy for known sex trafficking accounts and not only doesn’t remove fraud posts but charges known fraud operations higher rates for their ads, puked this vile mixture of plagiarism, artist’s blood, and AI sludge posing as photography onto BART station walls in San Francisco:

And of course it’s shit. Of course it’s shit. Holy gods, it is such hot garbage, and I’m not even talking about the implied higher situational awareness of someone wearing an AI PHONE ON THEIR FACE over people looking down at their regular phones

tho’ that’s a pretty fuckin’ hot take for them to have right there too, I have to say

I’m talking about the raw clownery of this image. Holy hell. Let’s zoom in at one of the insults to imagery:

And I’m not even mentioning the ghost in the room, by which I mean the four ghosts in this one particular rendered room:

And I have to ask:

HOW CAN ALL THIS STILL BE THIS SHITTY AND PASS MUSTER FOR THEM? HOW?

Christ it’s so insultingly bad. It’s infuriatingly bad. As photography substitute, as AI generated Not Art. It’s… it’s like it’s Anti-art, an opposite of art that mocks the real, that imitates while degrading both itself and its opposite.

Anybody can make bad art. I’ve made plenty. Also some good art.

But it takes real work to make anti-art.

And that’s what makes me want to fucking scream.

We all know how monstrously wealthy Fuckerberg is. How much money he and his company have. How he could jerk off with thousand dollar bills, wipe himself clean, and burn the dirties the rest of his wretched life and not even notice the difference.

So when you see that they’d rather put out this slapdash, revolting, uncaring – no sneering insult of a render than pay a photographer and a few models a few bucks for an afternoon photo shoot, what’s that say?

It’s not the money. He has all the money. All of it. Well, him, and the other TESCREAL fascists.

I think… I think I have to think… that it’s a matter of principle for them. A sick principle, but a principle nonetheless. It has to be, because otherwise it makes no. goddamn. sense.

I literally have to conclude that they hate art, and even more, hate artists. They have to, to consider this better. It must be principle for them to not care about artistic creative work, to not pay artistic workers. It has to be principle to hold all that in contempt, to say, “see? We just steal everything you’ve ever done, throw it into our churn machine, and then rub out our own version in half an hour to show you’re not any better than us. And you can’t do shit about it.”

They’ve made it clear that they’d not only spew this kind of rancid splatter, this metaphorical scrawl of shit, urine, blood, and theft across the walls of a city than break that principle.

And they’ll enjoy it.

I used to think, once upon a time, that Syndrome from The Incredibles was a little too on the nose,a little too pointed, maybe – dare I say it – a little too cartoonish for even a cartoon.

I’m starting to think maybe he wasn’t on the nose enough.

But that’s flippant, and maybe a little too easy.

What I really feel is that… I’m finally starting to understand – really understand, at a gut level – what Hayao Miyazaki meant when he called AI “art” an insult to life itself.

Because, well, almost anything can be art. Art is an observation and an intent, as much as anything else, and handing that mantle to something which has no awareness, no observation, no actual knowledge of meaning, no ability to opine, no personhood at all, a chum machine with less actual awareness than a housefly maggot…

…how could that be anything less than an insult to life, itself?

It took me a while to understand, Hayao. But I think I’ve finally got there.

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the united states declares strategic war on the EU

2025-12-10T17:31:06Z

Anders Puck Nielsen speaks on the Trump/MAGA’s new U.S. National Security Strategy document:

It is official US policy to work towards regime change in European countries, and to weaken or even destroy the European Union.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAh-xEteBz4

This is correct. The document is very clear on that point. But here’s more from Anders:

The United States sees it as a strategic priority… that MAGA movements come to power in Europe, and they intend to use the means that they have to support such movements in the fight against the current centrist governments.

These are some very dramatic statements that have raised deep questions about whether there is any foundation for NATO to function going forward if the United States sees it as a strategic priority to undermine the governments of other NATO countries. …

It’s really hard to see how there can be an alliance any more. The reality is that the views expressed in this [policy document] are in many ways identical to the Russian viewpoints on Europe and the Russian goals of regime change in European countries.

He further discusses the document’s demands for ‘free speech,’ in the sense of ending social media moderation and opposing the exclusion of hate speech, the lifeblood of MAGA fascism. There are several demands in the document around these topics, which he sees – correctly – as focused on helping Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg push MAGA/fascist propaganda into Europe through their algorithmically-driven propaganda machines.

Elon Musk’s “X” is the bigger threat, of course. As Nielsen puts it: “If you’re European, then it is a national security priority to stop using X.” Elon Musk bought Twitter to turn it into a fascist propaganda fountain, as opposed to Zuckerberg’s primary intention of making as much money as possible, working with fascists if that’s what gets the job done.

I have, of course, been saying that it’s time to stop using X since a few months into Elon Musk’s takeover of the site because of this exact reason, but, well – who the fuck listens to me?

Anders’s final key takeaway here is that this document doesn’t show a MAGA-led US deciding not to care at all about Europe, but instead shows a US deciding to care very much about Europe – mostly western Europe – with the specific and stated intention of installing MAGA governments, telling Europe that they must be MAGA – fascist – to be allied with the US.

This move would be an extension of what MAGA see as “their” western hemisphere, which other than western Europe means North and South America, including Greenland.

Naturally, this process would include granting Russia and Trump’s second-best pal Putin their own sphere of influence in the east. This portends the US’s impending betrayal of Ukraine, and later, a betrayal of the Baltic states, Poland, probably a couple of others (Moldova? Romania? Bulgaria?) as well.

But why? Does Trump love Putin and Orban that much?

I believe It’s more than that, and more than Trump’s ego, believe it or not. It’s more than his desperate longing to be a dictator and it’s more than his sheer will to steal every dollar in sight. Trump and MAGA, well… they are definitively fools, morons, white nationalists, imperialists, longing for a white imperial past. But I still think that Putin has more choate strategic plans than Trump, and I still think Ukraine is a climate war, so…

…shall I post this line again? Sure, I’ll post this line again. Here’s what I think Putin really wants – not what he’ll get, what he wants. It’s a minimum goal, to “secure” the nation:

That’s oversimplified, of course, but this is a small map and a big thick line. The reality would be far different, and most likely more like existing national boundaries, but still: it gets the idea across.

Meanwhile, when Russian maximalists and propaganda shills talk about how “we should march all the way to Paris” – which they do, repeatedly – here’s what I think they want:

And what do these lines have in common?

Mountains.

Tall, easier to defend, mountainous, migration-blocking borders.

It’s simple-minded in a lot of ways, I suppose, but so is keeping the border at the Rhine and that kept French foreign policy busy for a few centuries, so border politics don’t have to be all that complex.

Putin et al – they know climate change is real. Trump’s a decaying fool and might not know now if he ever did, but Putin? He knows. But heading a petrostate dictatorship with lots of far-northern land? He doesn’t want to stop it, because it’s the outsourced expense of allllllll Russia’s money, and if billions die, well, that’s the cost of doing business.

I call map one Putin’s Wall. Map two? Let’s call it Solovyov’s Wall, since as far as I can tell he’s the most famous proponent of “marching all the way to Paris.” Soloyvov’s Wall isn’t attainable – it won’t happen, it’s (ugh) aspirational – but I do think Trump wants to give Putin his wall, and that Putin has enough trust in Russia’s ability to handle MAGA that he’s willing to let Trump and his replacements handle the west.

Personally, I think MAGA has enough interest in a semi-mythical White Europe that they’re willing to do it. As long as they’re lead by the right – white, fascist – governments.

Hence, this hideous betrayal of a document.

That said, let me be real clear about something: On their own, Russia cannot attain Putin’s Wall. It’d take a complete American betrayal and European capitulation for them to have any chance. They cannot do it alone.

But thanks to MAGA and Trump, they’re on the edge of getting that American betrayal. They want to push that betrayal to completion. If they get it, then they’ll help the US make MAGA happen in Europe, in order to get the second necessary condition of European collapse and capitulation.

Russia’s no match for the EU as a whole. But torn apart? Picking off one little country at a time is… it’s not easy, it’s absolutely not, but they’re willing to kill as many of their own as is necessary for as long as is necessary to do it. Particularly if they’re ethnic minorities. And since nobody wants to flee a climate disaster to a war zone anyway, so he wins either way. Whether deterred by mountains or by war, refugees would go elsewhere, or not at all.

And that’s why I think this is a climate war. Not a war triggered by climate changes in Russia, but by Russia wanting to keep oil and gas going forever and keep out the people that will starve and kill.

You noticed Iran saying that Tehran will have to be abandoned as a capital, didn’t you? It’s more corruption and incompetence than climate change – but it’s a bit of all three. Climate change has moved the timetable. Made things worse. And yet, we’re just getting started.

So, then. Where are we? Ah, yes. How this all plays out.

There’s a bit of a feeling out there that Trump is weakened and even some who think that this nightmare is… more or less over. That Trump is a “lame duck,” that there is no MAGA without him.

That’s partially true. Trump is weakened. MAGA is, too, and they’ve been dependant upon his stardom – and fandom – to reach critical mass. They will be badly wounded – but not out – once he goes.

But none of that means this is over. The more trouble MAGA and Trump think they’re in, the more Trump and MAGA will lash out, trying to push their fascist power fantasies into existence. We will all see more betrayals, more sabotage, more oppression – the ICE army of white supremacists they’re working to summon into existence, funded by the so-called “big beautiful bill,” will actively work to dwarf the violence and abuses we’ve seen this year.

It’s their vision of the future, and they’re going to fight for it. It’s what they want, it’s what they’re all in to get, and it’s what they will do anything to achieve.

And they will not go down quietly. Take heart in the recent massive election shifts. Take heart in Trump’s decay and weakness and failing… opinion polls. Take heart in the America First/MAGA civil war. Take heart in all of it.

But do not, for a moment, think this is actually over.

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Maps Release: Greater Northshore Bike Connector, MEGAMAP 2.0.7

2025-11-23T08:50:33Z

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.0.7 – 23 November 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.0.7.

This release contains two major corrections to the 2 Line Bike Connector Map, as well as notice of a December 1-5 closure of the EastRail Trail in Renton near the Seahawks Training Centre.

Here’s the complete changes list:

WARNING: EastRail Trail South in Renton near the Seahawks Training Centre will be CLOSED from December 1-5 for regravelling. (MEGAMAP only)
CORRECTION: 132nd/134th from NE 24th to NE 60th in Bellevue along Bridal Trails Park is currently INCORRECTLY labelled as having bike lanes. IT DOES NOT. This will be corrected locally (ala Seattle corrections) and I will relay the error to the maintainers of the 2 Line Bike Connector Map. Thanks to @astruder for the correction. (MEGAMAP only)
CORRECTION: NE 40th in Bellevue between 140th and 148th Ave NE is currently INCORRECTLY labelled as having bike lanes. IT DOES NOT. This will be corrected local (ala Seattle corrections) and I will relay the error to the maintainers of the 2 Line Bike Connector Map. Thanks to @astruder for the correction. (MEGAMAP only)
REMOVED: Work on Sammamish River Trail in Woodinville between 175th and 178th is functionally complete, and no more closures are listed. (Both maps)

All permalinks continue to work.

If you enjoy these maps and feel like throwing some change at the tip jar, here’s my patreon. Patreon supports get things like pre-sliced printables of the Greater Northshore, and also the completely-uncompressed MEGAMAP, not that the .jpg has much compression in it because honestly it doesn’t.

Enjoy biking!

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Maps Release: Greater Northshore Bike Connector, MEGAMAP 2.0.6(a)

2025-11-10T20:07:16Z

Greater Northshore Bike Connector Map 2.0.6 – 1 November 2025 – is now available on github, as is MEGAMAP 2.0.6a.

This release reflects a two-week intermittent closure of the Sammamish River Trail in Woodinville, showing an UNOFFICIAL detour. It also shows the newly extended bike lanes on 124th Ave NE in Kirkland (up to NE 124th St, yes, same number different direction), and an update to the extended closure of Kirkland Central Connector through at least the end of November for emergency sewer line repair.

At least that one has a signed detour.

All permalinks continue to work.

Enjoy biking!

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