Oh Twitter Bots. Oh Twitter Bots. How stupid.

 Late last night, I tabbed back into Firefox and looked at my twitter page. When I did so, I found that my twitter account, @tzed928 had been locked, because of a post I made which the Twitter bots decided was a suggestion to self-harm or suicide. My twitter handle is a name I made up as something short and relatively anonymous back when I was playing World of Warcraft to allow me to tweet images and text out of the game. From there, my participation grew until I was tweeting regularly out of that account. Well, that is now coming to a close. Earlier that night, someone with the handle @jtrebach posted a tweet of a then-unknown root and then asked if anyone would eat it if they were hungry. the captioned tweet below is the reply I made. A relatively sensible suggestion slice off a small piece of the root and rub it on the web between your finger and thumb. If you fee a burning or tingling sensation, discard the root and do not eat. read the survival guide. According to the almighty Twitter Bots, this is a suggestion to self-harm or suicide. In Fact, it is entirely the opposite. The picture was, as I later found out, that of a mandrake root. Mandrake  root is dangerous and can be harmful or fatal if swallowed. It contains datura. The procedure that I suggested would have saved unknown numbers of people from a fairly horrible death by poison. The irony is not lost on me.

Notes:

 Twitter is a registered trademark of Twitter inc and used under the fair use exception, to wit: "purpose of research, private study, criticism, review, news reporting, education, satire or parody"

World of Warcraft is trademark Activision Blizzard and used without permission under the fair use exception, for : "purpose of research, private study, criticism, review, news reporting, education, satire or parody 

Note: As if it needed saying : I do not condone, endorse or recommend self harm of any kind.  

Note: I will not relent on this. I was not and am not wrong. My tweet violated no terms of service. It's intent is crystal clear to anyone who is not a moron or a robot. 

Note: The irony is not lost on me that you can demand the head of the President of the United States on a platter, cheer on the nazi party, use whatever racist slurs you want, but mention "take your knife and slice . . . " and you get banned. I'm lookin at you, Jack Dorsey.  

From another world, an invading force attempts to conquer Earth.

 Aboard a ship of the Alien invaders:

                 Marcie was tired. Although bruised and broken by the beating the thralls had given her, she dragged herself to her feet, nearly screaming as one broken rib jammed into a lung. She didn't care.  The alien overlord was here, and she needed to be on her feet. For just a few minutes more. 

     The being spoke through its favored thrall by attaching one of it's tentacles to the thrall's neck. "You are the one called Scanlon. Why do you come here to die? You cannot beat us... you cannot win" The aliens had come from Proxima Centauri b with technology superior to Earth's but they did not use the expected saturation atomic bombing. Nukes had been used, but Judiciously. Tactically The large scale bombing had been done by Fuel-Air boosted bombs. The Pentagon, Capitol, White House, Arlington Hall, Joint Base Langley and more had all been leveled by FABs. So-called concussion bombs Some said a nuke salvo would have been kinder. But the Proximans were not kind. Why be kind to ants one steps on ? Why be nice to slaves, when cruelty was more useful. 

Some thoughts from 2017.

  Consider, I wrote this in the first year of TFG's regime. I stand by what I said then, and say it again now:

                       This is not going to be a well-received post. Donald Trump or no Donald Trump, the time is going to come when we will just have to take the hit and take North Korea out. I know. It's not something anyone wants to think of. It's not a pretty outlook. Friends, I do not say this lightly or without forethought. Kim Jong Un, and his generals, are in fact a kleptocracy, but with the added kicker that they're unstable. belligerent and if they feel backed into a corner they will take steps. And if they have deliverable nuclear weapons, there is no stopping them from using the nukes. You should note that they are not shooting them at Guam, which they have threatened, but at Japan, an even bigger devil in their worldview. We will have to brave the thousands of artillery weapons they have, accept the pain and deaths from that, and push forward anyway. Note please that I do not wish to do this. I have long said that war must be the last tool from the box. But, the Chinese will do nothing to topple the Kim regime, and they are the only power who could. If the North Koreans will not moderate themselves, we will in the end have no choice but to wipe their military off the face of the earth. All right, I've said enough. I've probably said too much. But I cannot at this time see any alternative in the near future. I hope I'm wrong.

My Statement Regarding Our Exit From Afghanistan.

 We, the United States of America, are currently in the progress of leaving Afghanistan after some two decades of being the country's police force and army. 

We initially went in there in 2001 after the origin of the 9/11 terrorist attacks was traced back to Al Qaeda, and the origin of the attackers was traced to Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan. In this cause we were right to go in. Let that be known. We were attacked, and we responded, as a nation must so respond. 

It is now some twenty years later, and the USA is now removing itself from Afghanistan. As I knew we would do. We've cut and run, as we did before in Vietnam. People whom we promised to stand by have and are as we speak being left to the not-so tender mercies of the Taliban. My Statement : This is a black day for America. But I don't blame Joe Biden. The mechanics that led up to this day were born by "W" Bush, carried on by Barack Obama (who did try to fix things, but it really wasn't going to happen.) and the last knives were driven in by TFG. He set things up so this would happen on Biden's watch. He hosted the Taliban leaders here at Camp David, and basically gave them everything they asked for. The people at the top of the Afghani government were (and are) crooks and liars who own the lion's share of the blame for this. Had they been honest, and dealt fairly with their troops, and seen to it they got paid, supplied and occasional leave to see their families, perhaps then the ASG wouldn't have collapsed under the Taliban attacks. I also want to mention the Taliban, and the situation there in the region. The Taliban were never, ever going to deal honestly with the USA. They are religious zealots with a power addiction who need to be lording it over someone else, and nothing short of a total control of the country was ever going to satisfy them. There is no bargaining with people who believe that it is okay to break their word when that word is given to a nonbeliever or infidel. We should have expected this, and taken steps to protect those whom we need to help leave the country. Now, dozens of them have died, and thousands are in immediate peril of their lives. We are not doing enough to help them. We will wear the blood stains of this for a long time, and we should. My final comment: We MUST never make war unless we are willing to go the full distance, fight to the last, kill the enemy until he surrenders unconditionally or we wipe them off the face of the earth. No safe spaces. No havens. Even if it means pissing off the Russians, Chinese or whoever. IF WE DO NOT HAVE THE STONES FOR IT WE SHOULD NOT BE DOING IT. No half measures. No more wars of containment. No more Police Actions. We're either ALL IN or we STAY HOME.

The Ghost of January 6th 2021

 Some dates to remember: November 3 2020. Election Day. a Red-Letter Day if ever there was. It began early, with voting in person being mostly stronger than anticipated, but with a lot of mail-in ballots. In Arizona, if you are registered to vote and made a request for it, you got a mail-in ballot automatically. You fill your ballot out, marking the candidates and issues you want with a black or blue pen. Felt tips are permitted. It's thick paper and won't bleed through. Live in-person voting carried on all day, but slowly. Around 10 pm  Eastern time, it looked to be very close, at least in the Electoral College. (in the national popular vote, it wasn't even close, with Biden eventually pulling a 7 million vote lead. ) By midnight, Trump started declaring himself the winner in states he clearly hadn't won. By 2 AM it was clear that, if Arizona and Georgia did not go for Trump, that he would not in fact be re-elected.

 The American Ideal was never about owning human beings. It was never about mass murdering of native groups. Yes, these things happened, and anyone with any common decency in them wishes they had not. I can and do celebrate the things that the best of our thinkers of the day wanted for our country, without forgetting the bad things that were done by those who did not want the Ideal, just the gold. I can cheer for the Red White and Blue without forgetting the black and red people who suffered. I can be glad I live in a land which is still at least nominally free while many others do not. My nation is not perfect, but it is moving in a direction toward better, toward being "a more perfect union." With any luck it will continue to do so, long after I'm gone. So, unlike too many on this day, I still say "Three Cheers for the Red White and Blue." You mean more than just explosives, charred meat and beer. You mean Equality under the Law, Liberty and Justice for ALL. Maybe dumb old ideas. I'm dumb and old, and frankly, my time is coming to a close. I hope whoever replaces me remembers to keep the good things while not forgetting the bad ones.

 

 

Some notes about the Epidemic and our response to it.

Okay gang. quick note: Back in 2015, there was a disease scare. (Zika Virus) At that time, I tried hard to warn people that we are woefully unprepared for a large scale outbreak. My words went largely unheeded. Mostly because I have the "Reach" of a man whispering down a well at midnight. In other words, none. Not my fault -- I'm not popular. I'm not wealthy, I'm not a famous person. But I felt I had to make the effort, and so I did. Well, 5 years on, we had changed little (although Obama made a start ) and now we desperately need to change, and due to the ineptitude of our national leadership, we are not. But this isn't about the President. I've ranted quite a lot about the President, not just because he is politically opposite to me. But now it's time to talk about the elephant in the room, and I do not mean the political party.  What I am referring to here is this: We largely owe this shit-poor response to the desire long-inculcated in a large segment of our population to see "The Administrative State" dismantled. To increase chaos. Most recently you've seen this in the character of one Steve Bannon.