Go Back | Kim Dorland

Posted by sarcozona on February 8, 2017. No comments.

There are some great Kim Dorland pieces up at the VAG right now as part of the Ambivalent Pleasures exhibit. The show has some really moving pieces that aren’t on Dorland’s website.

It wasn’t ok when Bush did it, but it was worse when Obama did

Posted by sarcozona on February 7, 2017. No comments.

And now Trump has it.

One of the more shameful aspects of the Obama presidency was watching liberals reverse-engineer reasons for why Bush-era security policies were now good, as they became Obama-era security policies. The most common rationale they landed on was the usual one about there being a tradeoff between security and privacy, and in a dangerous world we’ve simply got to give the spooks greater latitude (read: break whatever laws they want).

This argument is trash for many reasons, but among them is that it presents an incomplete picture of what is being sacrificed. Individual privacy is harmed by dragnet surveillance and unaccountable security agencies, but so is the basic democratic nature of the political system.

Source: This is how the American republic ends

Downtime

Posted by sarcozona on February 6, 2017. No comments.

I’m moving from Bluehost to inmotion hosting. Depending on how much I fumble the process, there may be some times this site isn’t available in the next few weeks.

While you’re waiting for the bus

Posted by sarcozona on February 6, 2017. No comments.

The War With the Fed Begins

The Information War Has Begun

Massive scientific report on marijuana confirms medical benefits

What Happens When Algorithms Design a Concert Hall? The Stunning Elbphilharmonie
I would like to go here

Matt Christman on the Chaos of Capitalism.
Job advice: have you considered turning the world into a sci fi dystopia?

My self care is reading politicians’ bad press releases and bitching about them

Posted by sarcozona on February 5, 2017. No comments.

Large crowd of protestors with signs in front of Trump tower on a cold, gray day in Vancouver, BC

via Flickr user Pretty Pants

Hey, I care about you and the world we live in. Here’s some of how I expressed that this week:

Let Chuck Schumer know he needs to take a page from the Tea Party book and engage in some serious obstructionism wrt Trump’s dangerous and dangerously ignorant cabinet picks. Told my senators to get on the obstruction game as well and use the whole 30 hours of floor debate time for all of the nominees.
Told my senators and reps that our refugee and immigration policies shouldn’t be racist as fuck and so incompetently deployed as to be destabilizing. Also reminded them that our totally fucked up foreign (military + economic) policy is a big part of the reason there are so many refugees and people wanting to immigrate and maybe they should fucking fix that. I also thanked my senators for some of the good policies they’ve supported in the past wrt immigration and refugees and for speaking out about this particular executive order.
Asked my rep to keep opposing the contingent in the house that’s trying to sell off our public lands, specifically HR 622. Since he’d mentioned protecting us from violent extremists in his immigration statement, I asked him to maybe get a handle on the increasing violent extremism and ideological movements on public lands (Bundy, etc). I also thanked him for voting against the specific rules change that makes it easier to sell off public lands.
Asked my senators to stop trying to break up the 9th Circuit Court so they can skirt the anti-discrimination and environmental protection baked into that court’s precedent.
Told my senators that Steve Bannon should in no way be on the NSC and maybe people whose goals are not to totally destroy the state would be more appropriate.
Told my senator to stop hawking for war with Russia and Iran because we’re already bombing too many countries.
Watched Auntie Mame in a state of horrified and cringing confusion. Read an endless succession of positive reviews and felt totally out of step with everyone in the world.