A favorite line from Bill Mahar, back when he was on Letterman (a popular television program circa '90):

"Life is a swirling, sucking eddy of despair… In which the only illumination is from flickering glimpses of false hope in an ever-blackening universe."

This piece from the Post hits a sweet spot:

The First Amendment protects our freedom of speech and assembly and, yes, protest. But that doesn’t mean you are allowed to sit in traffic, or occupy a politician’s office, or chain yourself to a police car, even though none of those activities is violent, and even if you are doing them in the name of a cause. You will be arrested anyway.

And that’s the point of civil disobedience. If you believe a law is unjust, you can intentionally break it to call attention to its injustice. But civil disobedience only means anything if you are also willing, like Martin Luther King Jr., to accept being arrested and punished for breaking the law. Otherwise you are just throwing a tantrum.

The point of protesting is to demonstrate your willingness to sacrifice your own safety and security for a cause you believe is greater than yourself.

He shouted that with a chainsaw? that's...talented.

Protesters saying "f**k the police", now saying "call the police" after man shouts "go home" with chainsaw.

https://twitter.com/freezerohedge/status/1269008359291621376

The truth shall set you free?

Until people start forming beliefs based on evidence rather than the narrative that's most comforting, our discourse will continue to be toxic trash.

(Also, as long as media outlets employ people with a documented history of fabrication & fabulism, the media will be unreliable):

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1266856025191256064

Enjoy the pwnage, Half Whitmer.

In a unanimous 7-0 decision, the Michigan Supreme Court sided with 77-year-old barber Karl Manke over Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Friday.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/05/michigan-supreme-court-unanimously-sides-with-77-year-old-barber-over-gov-gretchen-whitmer/

Breathing illusion.

This is how the Twilight Saga should have ended:

https://twitter.com/PandasAndVidya/status/1269077029544169472

She said what?

https://twitter.com/undeadscribe/status/1269053129598939142

Hi Ben!

Bronze age crochet:

https://twitter.com/CSMFHT/status/1268756213665198081

> "Until people start forming
> beliefs based on evidence rather
> than the narrative that's most
> comforting, our discourse will
> continue to be toxic trash."

I would describe this as exceptionally weak commentary.

#1. It's presented less as a calculation than as a petulant demand: 'You *will* start forming your beliefs as I command you, do you understand?'

#2. It betrays the delusional daydream that the speaker might ever be empowered to specify the basis for the beliefs of others. That never happens. Ever. Don't kid yourself.

#3. The word 'evidence' is deployed with self-aggrandizing unctuousness, as if the reader is might be hearing about it for the first time, and could turn out to be grateful. The truth is that everyone has evidence for their beliefs, everyone. You might not like their evidence, or you might imagine yourself quickly invalidating it… But so what? How do your fantasies make you the Crown Prince of the Manifest?

#4. As of this hour, and I mean the moment you read these words, the word "narrative" is officially poison. I'm a CompLit minor, m'kay? I get it. But dim bulbs are using it with such profligacy that their illiteracy and ahistoricism are plainly exposed: They're feigning scholarly expertise in communication which is nowhere apparent.

#5. This reliance on bogus wordplay continues: In this hour of profoundly fleshy hazards, why should anyone listen to snarking prattle about "discourse"?

#6. The word toxic is also long overdue for deprecation. The popular tongue loves it! It's a fun word to pronounce, in that childhood kind of way; not one, not two, but *three* high-frequency consonants wrapping just a pair of everyday vowels! Easy to spell! Best of all, includes built-in allusions to chemistry, heavy industry, and pharmacology... And yet all it really means in the street context is 'nasty.'

#7. And, finally, 'trash.' This person wants nothing more than to condemn others, distant people, in harsh terms.



And whaddya know… It's Glenn Greenwald!

Seriously, who could be surprised?

Six, that link is golden.

• It also looks like this Covid art from Surgisphere.

• Despite the distractions of 2020, I still snickered. Maybe you have to be old enough to remember the relentless idiocy of the television advertising.

But wait, read below in the comments, it gets even worse:

https://twitter.com/arilavenderdre1/status/1268723692563030023

Six, that link is golden.

Crid at June 6, 2020 11:31 AM

Archaeologists have to justify their grants, they just can't say that the tchotchkes they dig out are mundane appliances because the gravy train will go away.

This is why everything they find must be classified as either an important religious artifact or it's a sex toy.

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.

https://twitter.com/NieTwojInteresQ/status/1269042952644562945

Progress arrives, either with damnable subtlety or brutalizing irony.

More ironing, no sizing.

More ironing, no sizing.

What's going to happen is that there's going to be a complete media blackout on the chaos that will ensure. They're going to spin it as Things are now better in Minneapolis now that the cops are gone!

And companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter will smother any independent news outlets that dare to push the opposite.

I was so, so fucking right about#4: Eighty-three minutes later, they kiss me right on the lips.

New New York Times @NYT_first_said

Tweets words when they appear in the New York Times for the first time.

narrativized

12:51 PM · Jun 6, 2020
10 Retweets 48 Likes

Every last one of you owes me a glass of Chianti.

> will smother any independent
> news outlets

That's going a little far. They might well want to, but Minneapolis is an enormous population center, full of people who are as connected as anyone on the planet. Those companies haven't done so well at hiding what's become of Detroit.

Last month some Twitter VP of engagement said something like "These are flyover places for a reason."

They're evil, but not crafty.

And I wonder.. Are they taking hints from the Chinese government and the reason these DAs are not lifting a finger is because someone has videos of them like a Beethoven solo, aka In A Minor.

https://twitter.com/RebelNewsOnline/status/1269065833340379136

Still can't read your own links Crid?

And what are we at, 6-0 Crid starting a fight?

Starting a fight?

Honestly it is one of your more bizarre antics, Crid. Are you trying for a Monty Python remake or something? This repeated posting of stuff about masks that support everything I've said about them is quite absurd.

For the record I agree and support all but one of your links on masks. There was that one odd one done by a journalist trying to 'correct' the doctors and scientists on the topic. The guy horribly flubbed things. But other than that one you've posted many great links on the study of masks and their uses. It is just too bad you don't appear to have read any of them.

> "A coffee filter strapped to your
> face with rubber bands has got to
> be better than nothing ..." ~Crid

> Not really. None of those make a
> difference for a healthy person.
> The best use is for infected people
> to use masks. In that case even
> paper masks help a lot.

> Ben at March 15, 2020 7:20 AM

It's like you've never even heard of communicable disease, or are so pathologically narcissistic that any mechanics of a shared environment are invisible to you. So you make crazy shit up, centralized clearinghouses and potential wealth and pipelines, and arrogantly demand recognition of your expertise. It's fuckin' annoying.