Oct 31

Dent Intent

We are gender neutrally totally and irreversibly fucked.

Oct 30

Post Post

I had never thought about the fact that many young people don’t vote because they have no idea how to use a post office or send mail as they’ve never had to do it.

When I was at the post office to register, this poor girl, clearly also a college student like me, didn’t know what “postmarked” meant and had no idea how to send an important document by mail. Most people my age have zero need to go to the post office and may have never stepped into one before.

I know how to use a post office but even I rarely send mail. Someone who’s 20? They’ve had the internet and online bill payment their entire life. Why would they need to know any of that? To them, it sounds like sending a telegram sounds to us. When they must do this for voter registrations and absentee balloting it must seem an anachronistic, impossible task.

If that makes you laugh, send any telegrams lately? If not, how would you do it? It wasn’t at all hard but it sure seems that way when you have no clue at all how to even start. Your grandparents would’ve had no problem with this task at all.

Oct 30

Ideas Draft

I’m developing a theory about how movements like feminism and relatedly #metoo quickly get co-opted by the acting dominant societal narrative. Not in this case capitalism (the easy go-to) or neoliberalism, but patriarchy and puritanism. It occurs principally since a lot of women are immersed in patriarchal notions and this conditioning will tend to “pull” them back to enforcing patriarchal gender norms on other women (and by dint of that, men) though it’ll be cloaked in a glamor of feminism and #metoo and sisterhood.

This is what I mean when I talk about #metoo mainly being used to enforce proper assortative mating, though that is not all of it.

The end result of a lot of this will be chaperoned dates, hijabs or the secular equivalents for women, increasing separation and segregation of the sexes (this is already occurring) and of course the condemnation of any men (in particular) or women who cross gender lines either for fraternization or sexual reasons.

It’ll be all new, though. It won’t be father- or brother-chaperoned dates; it’ll be some third-party service you click on through an app that sends a verified chaperone who records it, reports it and uploads it all to some cloud server somewhere. Etc. No, it won’t be the 1200s — it’ll be the 1200s with tech.

Oct 30

False Anger

I am still angry at Katie M. for writing such a great bit of poetry:

I met a man twice my age
Half joking, he said ‘I should warn you.
You’re a fish on the line, and the lines pulling in, and there’s a frying pan coming to warm you’.
And while I smiled, it occurred to me
I’m just gristle and blood
And I’ve spent half my life with the sun in my eyes
Chasing rainbows through the mud

OK, I am not mad at her. Who could be mad at Kate? I just wish I’d written it. I like her brain. I like it a lot.

Oct 30

Lion the Bottom of the Ocean

My guess on what happened to the Lion Air Flight JT610 is that the IRS malfunctioned and the pilot attempted to turn around, did not have adequate attitude information, thought he was climbing but was descending, and crashed into the ocean at 400mph.

This is the only thing that makes sense given the data I’ve seen. It was overcast in Jakarta when this crash occurred, which matches with my above theory.

On a plane like the 737 Max the GPS only provides position information, not attitude. If you lose IRS and are in clouds and are a bad pilot, you are screwed.

Oct 30

Austerity

Austerity also gave us Brexit. No, it wasn’t racism. That’s just the convenient excuse and another symptom.

Oct 29

Bambam

Obama and his milquetoast banker accommodation and throwing the middle class in the garbage is responsible for Trump and Trumpism in a very direct sense. Obama’s implicit denial of that and seeing him assert dissimulative crap while stumping is just awful.

Obama stood up for what was right to him: the banksters and the rich. From that “brave” stand, we got Trump.

Oct 29

Socioh What

I am really interested in the sociology of how it is possible for organizations like Mozilla to continue to make ridiculously, obviously stupid decisions with full conviction that they are heading the right direction.

How does that happen? It’s not uncommon at all. I pick on Mozilla because I am most familiar with that instance but it’s true across many organizations and times.