[ndcirque]

The US 250th Celebration is now scheduled to run from June 14. The actual date is July 3 but events are scheduled for the 14th including a military parade and a UFC fight on the White House lawn two weeks early. Why?

Trump’s birthday is on June 14th

That’s right, the Pedo Fuhrer has highjacked the national celebration to do a birthday party for himself at taxpayer’s expense.

[ndcirque]

Yesterday we watched a couple of soccer games. My niece and nephew each are on their high schools teams. They did well and both won handily.

It reminded me of when I was playing sports in school. In fifth and sixth grade I was in basketball. In junior high I ran cross country. It was fun. I really enjoyed it.

In high school though things changed. The coaches became more demanding. There was pressure. It stopped being fun. This culminated in an exchange I had with the cross country coach. I had been on the team for a week or more when one day I felt crummy. Not sick per se, just crummy, so I skipped practice. The next day the coach cornered me,

Coach; Why weren’t you at practice yesterday?

Me; I felt like crap and went home.

Coach; Your team relies on you. If you’re going to be on the team you have to show up for every practice.

Me; Then I guess I’m not on the team.

He was a bit shocked but that was it. I was done. I never went out for any sport again. It wasn’t just him, all of the coaches took high school sports way too seriously. The soccer coach was a wannabe drill sergeant. Football and basketball coaches were worse. I walked away from all of them. My view was if it isn’t fun then why do it?

Honestly I also left there thinking ‘don’t you press me because I WILL call your bluff’.

[ndcirque]

EV's require chargers. They have been springing up all over with brands like Tesla, Blink, ChargePoint, and others. After travelling across the country and looking at several of chargers I have concluded that these companies are either run by idiots or are scammers.

I can drive all over North America in an Internal Combustion Car. I can stop at any gas station, Shell, Conoco, Chevron, Sinclair, even independent stations and get fuel. To do that I simply pull out my credit card and pay. I don't need a Shell App. I don't need to set up an account with Chevron. I don't need to give personal information to Jakes Gas N' Go in Nowhere Maine. I just swipe the card I have and that takes care of it.

But in order to use an EV charger you need to give them name, address, credit card, and more to set up their app, and every company has their own unique and completely individual app. These companies are prone to failure, getting bought out. They run whatever data security they can afford. Possibly little or none. There is a history of companies folding and their servers ending up on the used equipment market with all of the customer data intact. There is a history of companies folding with management just firing everyone, closing things down, selling the customer data, and walking away because they don't care. It has happened. Requiring every network to have their own system, their own security, trusting a dozen or more charging networks and companies and their subcontractors is idiotic. It is a recipe for identity theft, data loss, fraud, doxxing, and more. Simply put they must think we are idiots.

They need to take a lesson from gas station. As soon as I can walk up to an EV charger anywhere, swipe my card, and charge my car, I will start using electricity for my longer road trips. Until then though, EV is for local and gets charged at home, gas is for road trips.

[ndcirque]

I find it funny to see posts on here asking “Where can I download or stream [new game/tv show/movie]. Seriously I am not going to post links to the places I {may or may not} pirate stuff. Thats how the authorities find and shut down these sites. What’s next? Are you going to walk down Main Street asking people where to buy some heroin?

Use your heads.

[ndcirque]

{This month I will be posting a poem each Monday}

Veterans

War

Turns strong men into cripples

Leaves brave men with nightmares

Makes patriotic men cynical

Forces good men to do the unspeakable

War leaves no one unharmed

For they have all seen the horror

Dying friends

Strangers in agony

A world beyond hell

Knowing people did this

People chose this

Knowing it is wrong in every way

This year

Honour a veteran

By not making any more

[ndcirque]

FIFA's huge World Cup to generate unprecedented cash and CO₂

The biggest and most lucrative ever World Cup this summer will also set a record for the most-polluting sporting event in history, environme

Spread across three countries the carbon footprint of this world cup will make it the most polluting sporting event in history. And 2030 spread across six countries and three continents looks to be even worse by several X.

But as the headline suggests, it’s all about the money, profit, and the organizers don’t care about anything else.

[ndcirque]

I loved Ghost in the Shell. The movies, Stand Alone Complex, Second Gig, the later shows. (With the exception of the Ghost in the Shell live action film.) It was exciting, well written and superbly animated, and raised fascinating philosophical questions.

I tried to watch it again recently. Somehow a show about a secretive paramilitary group that answers only to the countries leader, and has the authority to use lethal force without judicial review doesn’t appeal to me anymore.

[hope-for-the-planet]

Black Hills drilling project canceled after backlash from tribes

A South Dakota mining company has canceled a drilling project in the Black Hills after opposition from Native American tribes and local grou

Protests and lawsuits from Native American tribes and other local groups stopped a graphite mining operation in South Dakota that was going forward without appropriate environment review.

The mining project has now been cancelled with the company stating it "doesn't intend to file another plan for this project.".

[ndcirque]

Fantastic news.

I don’t object to mining and resource extraction, but it has to be done with the input of the stakeholders. The Trump Forest Service tried to force through approval using some kind of emergency rules. Their action was totally illegal. The best part of this is faced with lawsuits from indigenous and other groups the COMPANY decided to end the project. My guess is they will sit on it for a few years, then start working with the stakeholders to put together a plan they are all comfortable with, then reapply.

[ndcirque]

So the Trump administration has charged Raul Castro with murder for the downing of two aircraft in the 1990s. I won’t comment on those charges.

But those planes were downed using EXACTLY THE SAME justification as Trump is using for blowing up boats in the Caribbean and off the Pacific coast. I think that Columbia, Panama, Mexico, and whichever other countries whose citizens have been killed should charge Donald Trump with murder.

Extrajudicial killings outside of times of war are ALWAYS wrong, ALWAYS criminal. ALWAYS.

[ndcirque]

Eighth in the Series.

[ndcirque]

I just blocked someone on here. Who? Don’t know don’t care. Were they making a good point in their post? Don’t know don’t care. Why did I block them? Their post started out, “I’ve known for a long time that all people on Tumblr hate PoC, but…” I stopped reading at that point and blocked them. Anyone that starts out with such a hateful, bigoted, and fallacious premise has nothing to say. I won’t waste time with idiots.

[ndcirque]

{This month I will be posting a poem each Monday}

It Always Follows

Once you allow the thing you hate to be censored

Everything including what you love will be censored.

Once you allow abortion rights to be stripped away

You have accepted that abortions will be forced on some.

Once you accept stripping legal rights from one group

You will see them stripped from all others, including you.

Once you accept denying human rights to anyone

You will see them denied to everyone including you.

Once you accept the killing of some people as necessary

You will find yourself in the crosshairs.

Once you accept leaders acting outside the law

You will see them abusing that power.

[ndcirque]

I find it annoying that whenever someone adds the word ‘adult’ to something most people assume it must be sexual. Say Adult Toys, or Adult Play, most people’s minds immediately go one direction.

My ‘adult toy’ is a motorcycle. I play on it every chance I get, and there is nothing prurient about it.

[foldingfittedsheets]

Years ago I found out my dad was hit by a car because he posted on Facebook. I called him panicking and he told me he felt fine. I insisted that was shock and that he needed to seek medical attention. He didn’t. It took years of hassle and physical therapy for him to be comfortably mobile again.

This serves as a good template for how my family communicates which is: poorly.

On a visit to California once we found out my nana was in the hospital because my mom, who knew but didn’t want to tell anyone, was pulled over crying as we drove past.

Today my dad texted me to ask if he could tag me with my saguaro art. Then he casually told me my mom is in the hospital. I still don’t know what the fuck is going on except elevated heart rate and that she wasn’t okay to drive. They’re keeping her until Monday and I don’t know why.

So tomorrow I’m calling out to do visit her and see if a goddamn nurse or someone will tell me what is happening.

[foldingfittedsheets]

So it turns out my mom has uhhhh leukemia. Which is apparently very treatable if she has the right one. But we won’t know until they take some bone marrow on Monday so I feel really normal and fine about that and I’m not disassociating at all.

But also at the hospital my parents told me my nana was in the ER two days ago with dangerously high potassium they think because the specifics never materialized but I guess she’s fine.

I made them promise to be more normal about sharing medical news but I am not holding my breath.

[ndcirque]

This reminds me of when I had cancer. My Doctor asked if there was any family history of cancer and I said as far as I knew other then my dad, no. Later I was talking to my mother about this. She mentioned that my grandfather had cancer. They had never mentioned it because “he got it from the asbestos in the shipyards so it didn’t count”. Then there was my uncle who had lung cancer “but he smoked his whole life so it was self inflicted and didn’t count”. Then as I was talking about my chemo she mentioned something about, when she went through treatment. Wait what? Oh yeah about twenty years before she had breast cancer and had surgery, chemo, the whole routine. “We didn’t tell you kids because we didn’t want to worry you.”

Turns out about half of my family has had cancer and my folks never talked about it.

[ndcirque]

I have had it with Apple Music.

Not the streaming service, I will never use that, the app itself.

I have a whole shelf of CDs that I ripped to iTunes originally, then when it became Music I ripped more. That is the music I want to play. Today I wanted to listen to a playlist that I made a while ago and noticed that half of the songs were greyed out. When I click on them I get a message that “This song is not available in your country”. WTF! I’m not streaming it. It is a song that I ripped from the CD that is sitting on my shelf. The file is on my system. I’m f-ing looking at both right now. I don’t care if it’s ‘not available’ here, in my house it is. I own my own copy. I suppose it could re rip the album, but wait while I can do that to my Mac I cannot share it to my phone and tablet. To share a song you need to subscribe to the AppleMusic streaming service.

I have had it with Apple’s continual money-grab.

So here is my question: Is there an app that I can put on my iPhone/iPad that would let me rip my own CDs and play my own music without any subscription or streaming BS?

[ndcirque]

Well that was a surprise. It’s not every day you wake up to see an attack submarine just offshore from where you live

EDIT: I do hope it’s Canadian.

[crazygnomenclature]

"Phobe (pt. 1/8)"

Strategic gagging is how I used to participate in all of my office meetings.

[ndcirque]

Story Time

Once I when was working for a Media Resources department at the University, we got called in to record a tenure review hearing. We set up the mics where the adjudicator sat, where the professor sat, and where the department head and his lawyer sat. Our job was to bring up the mics for each person speaking and turn them down afterwards and make sure everything went onto the tape.

The department head and his lawyer were sitting right in front of where I had my equipment and I could hear him chatting with his lawyer. From their conversations before the meeting I realized within just a few minutes that the head was a total AH and that he was trying to get rid of the professor not for anything he had done academically, but for racial and ethnic reasons. He even kept using “That [slur]” instead of the professor’s name, but all off the record because the hearing hadn’t started.

So when the hearing started I just ‘forgot’ to turn the department head’s mic down. Whenever the professor was talking the head would confer with his lawyer in the most insulting and offensive way. I made sure that all went onto tape. The hearing went on for a couple of days and I later found out that the other people working the hearing had done the same. We never talked about it, but we had all decided that keeping the AHs mic live throughout the hearing was the right thing to do.

We never heard what happened or of our ‘forgetfulness’ made a difference. But the adjudicator that received the tape did not complain to us.