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The strategic advantages of the US' current war in Iran

I crunched the numbers, and the strategic advantages for the US of picking this fight are: None. I do not think all wars are stupid or unjustified. But I do think this war is stupid and unjustified.

Generally, when I see armed conflict with the US at the forefront, I try to see what the strategic advantage is, stated or unstated.

I’ve had to shift that approach for the current administration, because the math just doesn’t math there. I started a new approach after we attacked Venezuela: follow the money, specifically the money pouring into the Trump family coffers. For the Trump administration, that means in particular follow where Jared is getting money from. And that means the Gulf states and Israel.

Since the inauguration, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar have poured more than 3.5 billion into Jared Kushner’s private equity fund Affinity Partners. Another 2 billion in stable coin assets have been issued by World Liberty Financial (Trump’s crypto company), after getting the backing by UAE. The Paramount acquisition of HBO/Discovery/Warner Brothers was funded by Kushner’s Affinity Partners…and the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar. And let’s not forget our favorite white elephant, the Qatari 747 that Trump is refitting as an his own Air Force One….that he plans on taking with him when he leaves the White House. There have also been several large billion dollar acquisitions by Gulf States of US based companies with not a peep of oversights (the buying of EA games for example).

Let’s look at a few real estate deals that have occurred since the inauguration.

-A $500 million resort in Oman with Dar Global (a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's Dar Al Arkan) and Omran, an Omani government-owned group

-A $531 million Trump Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with Dar Global

-A planned second tower in Riyadh

-A Trump International Hotel & Tower in Dubai, announced in May 2025

Just before Trump's Gulf trip, Dar Global and Qatari Diar (part of Qatar's sovereign wealth fund) announced a Trump-branded resort in Qatar valued at $5.5 billion. And, we keep getting the hints of pitches from Kushner about the development of the Gaza Bank.

The Saudi Public Investment Fund, the single biggest investor in LIV Golf, has played four tournaments in a row at the Trump family's Doral golf course in Florida.

Are you missing out on the Israel ties? Don’t worry, there are plenty that don’t involve the Gaza Strip. The 87 story hotel “Sarona” in Tel Aviv, which is under development, is likely going to be Trump-family managed and branded, due to deals between Eric Trump and the Israelis. And in case you didn’t hear about it over the last week, Eric Trump just did a 1.5 billion dollar deal to merge XTrend, an Israeli drone company, and a Florida based construction company (JFB), notably completed a couple days before we started firing on Iran.

Those things aren’t even an exhaustive list. It took me five minutes of googling. Think of what we aren’t seeing.

So what do I think the strategic advantage is of us attacking Iran right this minute?

None, whatsoever. We will continue to gloss over the fact that the unprecedented strikes against Iran last July were supposed to have totally destroyed Iran’s nuclear program (ha. Ha.) There have even been reports from within the administration that say there was no imminent threat against Americans presented to the Pentagon or to Congress, leaving the justification as…🤷‍♀️

Sometimes they say regime change. Sometimes they say to prevent a threat. All are vague on details, or even actual objectives writ large.

During this entire century, the creep of the executive branch to seize power has moved forward. What had been a brisk walk or slight jog has become an F1 race with this administration, and that’s part of what’s going on here. I believe that Trump has decided the US military is his own personal mercenary force, rentable by anyone willing to drop to their knees for him, with hands upraised and full of cash.

Again, what does provide serve for the American people? Nothing. Nothing at all.

It provides:

-the 10 millionth strike of the “seize power” blitzkrieg that started at the inauguration in 2024

-distraction from the Epstein files

-distraction from the most abysmal approval numbers ever recorded for a US president

-distraction from the complete lack of progress on the issues that many people who voted these people into power claimed they wanted: lowering of the prices of groceries, gas, and general cost of living

-exactly what those bribing this executive want: the Emiratis, Saudis, and Israel want Iran off the table, and for the US taxpayers to foot the bill.

So now here we are, at the part that we generally do well at: initial shock and awe attacks (although this time there have already been several US military deaths, casualties, and materiel losses that are shocking for an attack that occurred completely on our own timeline, which I see as a sign of what happens when you fire all the people who care about doing things well, and replace them with sycophants. Amazing that we’ve reached this stage of Stalinism so quickly; hopefully the famines aren’t next). Next comes the part that we do NOT do well at, or haven’t since Germany and Japan after world war II: nation building.

Of note is the fact that Trump continues to tell the Iranian people to take back their power. These directives would have been far more efficiently communicated if we hadn’t gotten rid of all the soft power last year. In this case, Radio Free America could have been great at communicating messaging. But we canned it. So now we have the ramblings of a non-statesman in a statesman role, with no true directives.

So at this point, this is what I’m expecting:

-Terror attacks and cyber attacks from Iran. The Ayatollah was 86 and they undoubtedly had a plan for how power would transfer after he was gone; that plan is already in place.

-The fraying of the “coalition” that Trump took into this, namely the gulf states and Israel. They are taking heavy fire they didn’t seem to expect, and most of those countries aren’t accustomed to anything harder than deciding which luxury vehicle to have their slaves polish today. (Like I told some friends today, the Gulf states are about to learn one of my favorite maxims: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth)

-Normally I think we’d be competent at handling the power vacuum we were about to set up, at least initially, but in this case…we aren’t doing it at all, since we are being led by amateurs who think state building, diplomacy and soft power are “woke”. So I assume adversaries are going to capitalize on that, and either we end up with a state in Iran we can’t control because it was facilitated by someone with cooler heads, or Iran descends into civil war and insurgency (very likely, IMHO), and pulls the rest of the region and us into it.

Also, we are rapidly depleting our weapons reserves, and that takes time to rebuild. None of this looks good from where I sit.

I didn’t believe these people when they said they were the “No More Wars” administration, and guess what. They aren’t. They’re just more blatantly stupid and corrupt this time. I am so angry that we are drawn back into ANOTHER middle eastern war, and they don’t even care enough to make the pitch to us plausible at all this time. I’m angry that the money that should go to our infrastructure is going to this, that American servicemember’s lives are being lost to this, and that it once again deceives what our country should represent.

Communicate with your lawmakers, look at how they are responding, and learn the lessons. Trump is not supposed to be able to declare war without Congressional approval, and though many of them are hopelessly corrupt and don’t care as long as they get theirs…you should still speak up. AND VOTE AGAINST THIS IN NOVEMBER.

Also, I’m sure that that Nobel Peace Prize will be here any minute now.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/eric-trump-invests-israeli-drone-155137456.html

https://san.com/cc/trump-family-business-ties-raise-ethical-concerns-ahead-of-middle-east-trip/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-business-deals-revive-questions-about-his-family-profiting-off-the-presidency

https://www.timesofisrael.com/trumps-mideast-visit-comes-as-his-family-deepens-business-crypto-ties-in-region/

Corrosion, Complacence, and the Tragedy of Yanky-72

I recently wrote this paper for a course I’m taking. This crash occurred at a squadron that my husband used in (in fact, just a few years before this mishap occurred). The shock of July 10, 2017 still affects us today. We were stunned, because it had been many years since the last Marine C-130 crash, and since it involved people we knew. When I decided to research this, I knew it would be emotionally complicated, but I wanted to learn more about the answers. Something that I find extremely valuable about aviation is how the US aviation community is relentless in dissecting problems, in an effort to prevent them from happening again. This is an approach to issues that I try to use in my personal life too: Unbiased reflection and attempts to learn and do better when terrible things happen. In doing research for this project, I discovered that the investigation was much more complex than I expected. I’m sharing this here for those who may be interested in learning more about what happened, and seeing what we can do to continue to learn from mistakes and improve. In particular, if you have ties to VMGR-452, it might be of interest. It might also be very emotionally heavy, so please don’t feel the need to read it if it’s too heavy. I understand.

The mission on July 10, 2017 was a typical flight on a typical day. Yanky-72, a USMC Reserve KC-130T, took off from Marine Reserve Squadron VMGR-452 at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York, with eight squadron members aboard. They were part of a flight of two with another USMC KC-130T. The aircraft flew to Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) in Cherry Point, North Carolina to ferry 7 MARSOC (Marine Special Operations Command) personnel, 1 Navy Corpsman, and their equipment to an exercise in El Centro, California. The flight began typically, with optimal weather, and the aircraft was crewed by five experienced crew members. As they were flying at 20,000 feet near Itta Bena, Mississippi, at 1549 EST, a catastrophic failure occurred. The incident occurred so quickly that the air crew didn’t even have the chance to make a Mayday call over the radio. The other C-130 was a few miles ahead, and they weren’t aware that anything had occurred until Air Traffic Control called over the radio and asked where the second aircraft in their flight was, as it had disappeared from radar.

At the same time, calls were coming into emergency services about a flaming aircraft crashing into a soybean field in rural Mississippi. Emergency services and locals rallied to the site to find a pancaked C-130 on fire in the field, with no survivors. Immediate shock rang out across the Marine aviation community, as well as a frenzied push for explanations.

Unlike certain other aircraft with a history of in-flight incidents (notable examples include the MV-22 Osprey, the AV-8B Harrier, and the classic V-Tail Beechcraft Bonanza), C-130s are a platform with a long history of reliability. With four engines, a solid frame, and many years of refinement design, testing, and manufacturing, accidents in C-130s are relatively rare. Generally when they crash it’s due to another aircraft colliding with them, or coming under fire. To have one spiral in pieces out of the sky on a clear day, with no warning, over rural America is nearly unheard of.

As the families of the fallen began to adapt to the reality of their loved ones being gone and memorials were underway, the command investigation began (also known as a JAGMAN investigation). Since there were no radio calls to offer initial information, and there was no Black Box or on-deck recorder, examination of the crash site was the main source for answers.

Over the course of several months, an exhausting investigation would show a dramatic, improbable, and tragic series of events. While flying at 20,000 feet, the number four propeller blade from engine two came loose from the propeller assembly and cut into the fuselage right behind the crew station. The impact of the blade into the structure of the fuselage caused a cataclysmic amount of force to transfer to number three engine’s driveshaft via an enormous shudder. The transfer of force combined with the energy of the propeller, causing the driveshaft to quickly get out of balance, ultimately breaking free of the driveshaft and launching the propeller off the engine mount and into the starboard side of the fuselage. The force of that strike on the longeron forced it to accordion, resulting in a structure failure of the aircraft that would force it to break into three pieces (crew station, fuselage, and empanage) within seconds. The propeller then moved down the starboard side of the aircraft, creating a huge cavity in the fuselage, and struck the starboard horizontal stabilizer, shearing it off entirely. From the moment the first blade sliced through the fuselage, the determination was that pilots loss all ability to control the plane at all. The pieces of the aircraft fell through the air, landing in a debris field over a mile wide. All 16 souls aboard the aircraft died from the fall.

As the investigation continued, the answers began to present themselves as to what had caused this unlikely scenario. The propeller blade that had started the terrible chain of events had intergranular corrosion and pitting on its interior. That corrosion had manifested itself into a 100 degree crack around the circumference of the base of the blade, over two inches long, and eventually that crack led to the failure of the base of the blade, resulting in the ultimate loss of the aircraft. The squadron’s maintenance records showed that the last time that blade had been overhauled (maintenance that was to occur every 5-6,000 flight hours), it was supposed to go through a very rigorous inspection procedure at a maintenance facility in Georgia. That inspection was meant to look for signs of fatigue, corrosion, or structural failures. The overhaul included the following steps:

(1) blade tear down, bushing and plug removal and cleaning; (2) glass bead blast of taper bore; (3) caustic soda etch; (4) borescope inspection of taper bore; (5) FPI of taper bore, screw holes and drive pin hole; (6) taper bore back-up inspection by eddy current; (7) meandering winding magnetometry (MWM); (8) taper bore ream; (9) beveled thrust ring grinding; (10) thrust ring inspection - mag particle; (11) butt face cut; (12) cold roll retention fillet; (13) airfoil shot peen; (14) airfoil grit blast; (15) low plasticity burnishing (LPB) of taper bore; (16) chromic acid anodizing; (17) permatreat taper bore; (18) foam application; (19) fairing rubber goods, heater installation; (20) balancing; (21) fit check of bushing; (22) wet installation of bushing; (23) final build-up/balance check; (24) disassembly; (25) application of preservative/packaging.

The last blade overhaul had occurred in 2011 at the Warner Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, at the Air Logistics Complex (WR-ALC). That location serviced Air Force, Navy, and USMC assets, most of them C-130s. It was found that in the case of Yanky-72, the corrosion that ultimately caused the crash existed at the time of that overhaul; the giveaway was that a layer of Permatreat sealant had been painted over the corrosion cracks and pits within the blade.

While the Navy and Marine Corps procedures called for 3 types of non-destructive testing (NDT) for corrosion, a 2020 federal investigation established that it was likely only one of those had been completed: MWM testing. MWM tests are specialized form of eddy testing; eddy testing is where a surface has an electric current transmitted through it, and if there are imperfections or cracks, the readings of the waves reflect changes that indicate an anomaly. MWM in particular is a form of eddy testing that involves a specialized array of nodes and more sensitive modeling and equipment that allows for a wider and more sensitive eddy test that can cover a broader area, and give more detailed data. According to the investigation, MWM eddy current testing was insufficient to find the cracks; for deep flaws, as was the case with the corrosion to the blade, the test can fail to penetrate deep enough get accurate results. The investigation didn’t have the exact WR-ALC paperwork for the eddy inspection, because after two years, in accordance with Air Force procedure, the original inspection documents had been destroyed (a procedure that has since been changed due to this incident), but they had general records to give them an idea of procedure at the time the overhaul occurred in 2011. Additionally, later investigation uncovered that the inspectors at WR-ALC didn’t have enough probes for the amount of eddy tests required, and the ones they did have were often considered “unreliable”. The 2020 investigation also found that a lead engineer had previously hidden this information during the JAGMAN investigation.

Procedure also required that the interior of the blade be inspected for corrosion, with a borescope. The investigation determined that if the borescope inspection was done at all, it was done improperly, because the anodized Permatreat coating that was applied during that maintenance period actually covered the corrosion pitting. If the borescope inspection had occurred in 2011, it was likely to have caught the corrosion, particularly since the post-crash inspections discovered that 12 of the 16 prop blades had similar corrosion issues (James, 2018). Therefore it was determined to be more likely that the inspection hadn’t occurred at all.

The final NDT inspection that was supposed to have occurred was FPI, or Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection. This was considered the most effective tool for finding deep corrosion issues, and paperwork showed that at the time a WR-ALC senior propulsion engineer named James Michael Fisher had signed a waiver for that procedure due to its time-consuming nature, and renewed that waiver multiple times. An FPI test involves a fluorescent material being applied to the surface being tested; when cracks or imperfections are found, it sinks into them. The excess dye is then wiped away, and the surface is lit with a UV light. Any cracks that had the dye sink into them then fluoresce, readily showing flaws that might be missed by other methods (including the naked eye). This was considered the gold standard of NDT tests for aluminum blades at the time. If this test had been used, the flaws would have been found in 2011, and the crash wouldn’t have occurred. A federal investigation in 2020 revealed that the engineer who had originally approved the waiver for FPI tests, had lied and destroyed documents about his involvement after the JAGMAN investigations. “He stated that a penetrant inspection would have detected the corrosion and pitting in the taper bore that led to the intergranular crack that caused the PB24 corroded propeller grade to fail,” according to the indictment. “Fisher stated that he could not understand why his System Program Office colleagues would approve such a Form 202. Fisher further claimed that he never would have approved the August 22 Form 202 because in 2011 there were problems with the reliability of eddy current probes.” He has since been arrested and charged with four federal counts of hindering the investigation; he is currently awaiting a trial, with a possibility of 20 years in prison.

The flaws in the inspection methods at WR-ALC were found to be extremely problematic. A pattern of complacency, pencil-whipping the paperwork, and a lack of knowledge of procedures all combined to make an ineffective environment for critical maintenance work, which ultimately took 16 lives.

Part of the issue was that the Air Force procedures and Navy/USMC procedures differed, and only 5% of the aircraft serviced were USMC or Navy assets. While the initial reports from the command indicated multiple failures with the Air Force and Navy processes, the later discovery of the hidden information regarding the NDT inspections that Fisher had concealed put the blame squarely at the feet of WR-ALC. The critical FPI inspections were required by the Navy/USMC manuals, but not the Air Force. So the choice to waiver it seemed simple on the surface, but ultimately was the linchpin in an argument that if the correct procedures were followed, the flaws would have been found 6 years before they led to the mishap. As a result, the Air Force ended up adopting the recommendation that the more stringent inspections be required for Air Force assets as well. An added damning fact was that once the blades had left WR-ALC, it was impossible for the maintainers at VMGR-452 to find the issues themselves. None of the issues were visible on the outside of the blade, and the field borescope that would have been required for detecting it was not equipment that they had access to. They had an aircraft that appeared perfectly safe from the outside, and had the paperwork to verify that it had been found to be safe according to all procedures, but in reality had a disaster eating away inside its propellers for years.

Many other process issues at WR-ALC, (including lack of attention to detail, not knowing where actual publications or procedures were located and instead requiring on memory retention of complex processes, and separating assets from their paperwork at many steps of overhaul) led to a culture of ineptitude and carelessness.

The outcome of all this is that several changes were made to prevent a similar disaster in the future. The timeline for replacing the legacy aluminum propellers with newer 8 bladed composite propellers was accelerated, to prevent similar corrosion issues. WR-ALC also introduced several “critical upgrades” to its procedures for aluminum propellers, including robotic borescope inspections for the taper bore of blades, which are more detailed and refined than the previous borescope equipment. They also upgraded to robotic eddy testing and robotic FPI testing, both of which make more consistent and detailed inspections possible and routine. The Air Force adopted the permatreat and wet bushing procedures that the Navy and USMC had required to make procedures more virulent and consistent between services. After the investigation found that none of the branches were robust in their oversight or QA of the WR-ALC facility, the services implemented regular QA audits and electronic logbooks for the maintenance work.

All of these lessons and procedural implementations have helped to reduce the likelihood of a similar event in the future. In aviation each disaster is a chance to learn and adapt to attempt to keep the same disaster from repeating. The lessons learned won’t bring back those who have been lost, but it does help us to build a safer future.

References

Eddy Current Testing Explained: How It Works and Why It Matters. (2025). One Stop NDT. https://www.onestopndt.com/ndt-articles/eddy-current-testing-explained

Insinna, V., & Ziezulewicz, G. (2018). Investigation Blames Air Force And Navy For Systemic Failures In Fatal Marine Corps C-130 Crash That Killed 16. Military Times. https://www.militarytimes.com/2018/12/05/investigation-blames-air-force-and-navy-for-systemic-failures-in-fatal-marine-corps-c-130-crash-that-killed-16/

James, Major General B. S. (2018). Command Investigation Into The Class A Aviation Mishap Within Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 452 On 10 July 2017. United States Naval Institute News. https://news.usni.org/2018/12/06/kc-130t-accident-report-video-reconstruction

Schogol, Jeff (2024). Air Force Engineer Charged With Cover Up In Marine KC-130 Crash That Killed 16. Task & Purpose. https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-marine-crash/

Sims, J. (2023). Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection: An Essential Technique For Surface Finishing In The Aerospace And Defense Industries. Valence Surface Technologies. https://www.valencesurfacetech.com/the-news/fluorescent-penetrant-inspection/

Zilberstein, V., Schlicker, D., Walrath, K., Weiss, V., & Goldfine, N. (2001). MWM Eddy Current Sensors For Monitoring Of Crack Initiation And Growth During Fatigue Tests And In Service. International Journal of Fatigue. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0142112301001542

Inadequate Maintenance at a USAF Depot Featured in Fatal USMC KC-130T Accident. (2018). Aeroassurance. https://aerossurance.com/safety-management/poor-propeller-maintenance/

#aviation

The Ozzman Goeth

I know I'm a few days late here, but RIP to the great Ozzy Osbourne.

Paranoid is the first album, of all music, that I remember being obsessed with. I was in 4th grade, and found myself hooked on it. I was terrified by the apocalyptic imagery of Ironman and Electric Funeral, and captivated by the social critique in War Pigs. As a child, it was my first introduction to the idea of skepticism by the populace, as to the true reasons for war. It would affect my perceptions for the rest of my life. I'd always been captivated by war history, and this gave me a new perspective. Fairies Wear Boots was a lighter hop into fantasy, and Planet Caravan was a relaxing instrumental. I remember my dad telling me about seeing them perform in Wichita when he was in high school, and the description of them being on a stage with red velvet curtains, while wearing all black. I spent hours listening to Black Sabbath on LP, and this was in the pre-internet era, where you either looked at the liner notes, happened to find an article about a band in a publication....or came up with your own interpretation. Those hours would affect me for the rest of my life.

I remember hearing the stories about the infamous bat, and Ozzy's partying. In my teenage years, I was lucky enough to attend one Ozzfest (1998), and was blown away. It was truly an experience like no other.

The argument could easily be made the Black Sabbath was in many ways the most influential rock band of all time. While the Beatles have been huge to music of course, and Jimi Hendrix reimagined what a guitar could be, and Led Zeppelin with its melding of rock riffs and blues ushered in decades of experimentation....Black Sabbath, to me, created metal. The darkness of that band, and its riff-heavy experimentation, has influenced every band I love. They were great at embracing the goth-heavy darkness with a tongue in cheek way at laughing themselves that pearl clutching church ladies have both missed and fainted at ever since, and I adore it. Iron Maiden and countless others continued that social critique, and still do. I love the dichotomy of the darkness of metal imagery, and the poetic sharpness, AND vulnerability, that Black Sabbath pioneered. To quote Full Metal Jacket, "I think I was trying to say something about the duality of man, SIR!"

I've been to probably over a hundred rock concerts in my life, as well as country and bluegrass and pop and blues and all other kinds. I love live music. And I have always felt safest at metal shows. There's a sensitivity there that outsiders may not recognize, but to me, is part of the true definition of metal. A scene that would look far different, if it would exist at all, without Ozzy, Black Sabbath, and their influence.

He led a life of successes, and open failures, and new beginnings. He always tried to do better, was honest about his mistakes, and fiercely demonstrated his love to family and friends, unabashedly. Those, to me, define what it means to be "metal". I am so happy he got his final (spectacular!) concert in Birmingham a few weeks ago, with the other three original members of Black Sabbath, and a complete lineup of the gods of rock, who gathered to show homage. It was the perfect bookend for one of the most fascinating characters of the past century. Goodbye, Prince of Darkness. We will miss you. Thank you for all you gave us.

In all my enthusiasm for amateur botany and mycology, I’ll tell you one of the most interesting things I’ve learned and encountered. I sometimes think the societal reactions to mushrooms and plants are the reverse of what they need to be, in terms of threat. I’ve seen so many times someone asking for identification for a plant, and they’ll say “Tastes like mint. Felt velvety.” Meanwhile, with mushrooms, I’ll see people who are afraid to get close to them, let alone touch or taste them. Friends, those two reactions should be inverse. You could take the most deadly mushroom, amanita phalloides, and touch it with no issue. You could even take a little bite, chew it, and spit it back out, and be fine. In fact, “chew and spit” is sometimes used as an official identifier by mycologists! It’s only by swallowing a mushroom that you could be poisoned. I don’t recommend trying this test out with a possibly dangerous mushroom, because you could accidentally swallow it or something, and the risk doesn't justify the reward. But it's totally normal, and demonstrates the level of relative safety that you have. Meanwhile, I see people happily touching, smelling, and tasting unknown plants, and you should NEVER do that. Just think of poison ivy, a relatively innocuous example. What's the worst that could happen? Well, it could really mess you up. But there are many far deadlier and more dangerous plants that look perfectly safe, and they grow all over the US. Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum), which is now invasive in the US, looks like a giant parsley plant, and has "phytotoxic" sap. That means, if you were to cut it or pull off a leaf and get the sap on you, once exposed to sunlight you would get a burn. And by "burn" I mean severe blisters, scars, and lesions that can hurt for months to YEARS. If it gets in your eyes, you can get permanent blindness. That sap is in every part of the plant that's above ground, including leaves, stems, flowers, and seeds. It doesn't hurt when it gets on you, so you might wander into it and break a couple stems, or work on cutting it down, and have no idea for a couple days, until the symptoms start. I first saw Giant Hogweed in Scotland. It is distinctive because it's enormous (the plants I saw were 6+ feet tall), but other than that it doesn't look like something as dangerous as it is. It doesn't have large thorns or anything. Let's also look at the plant in the article, poison hemlock. We have that growing here in North Carolina, and I've seen it several times. It looks like Queen Anne's lace, and is from the carrot family too. However, it has stems without "hairs", and they have purple splotches. That's it! Otherwise they look exactly the same! Now, what can happen if you taste or get the sap from this plant on you? It can give you any of these symptoms (I got this list from the Cleveland Clinic): Sweating. Vomiting. Dilated pupils (mydriasis). Excess salivation. Dry mouth (xerostomia). Rapid heartbeat (tachycardia). High blood pressure (hypertension). Restlessness or confusion. Muscle weakness and muscle twitches (myoclonus). Tremors and seizures. In more severe cases, hemlock poisoning can cause delayed complications such as: Slow heartbeat (bradycardia). Low blood pressure (hypotension). Muscle paralysis. Muscle breakdown and muscle death (rhabdomyolysis). Kidney failure (renal failure). Central nervous system depression. The reaction severity can also vary between individuals; the man in this article didn't eat it, and was still in a coma for months. Those are just a couple examples, but there are plenty of instances in which touching or eating a plant that you don't know can have terrible consequences. If you're bored, look up the Gympie-Gympie, or Dendrocnide moroides, a plant in Australia. Heck, brushing up against a stinging nettle will kick you in the teeth. In conclusion, just treat unknown plants like your instincts tell you to treat unknown mushrooms. If in doubt about a plant, you can always reach out to me, I'm happy to help you figure out if something is dangerous or not.

Big Beautiful Bill is a Big Wrecking Ball Bill

I don't know how many are paying attention to how much is in the "Big Beautiful Bill" (could that name be any more idiocracy than it is?), but I just watched part of the C-SPAN discussions from last night. I am sharing the link so that you can see it yourself. The moment I'm talking about is at the 2:14am timestamp.

Due to the "PAYGO" limitations, any bill that adds to the budget, has to have offsets for it in cuts. If it doesn't, at the end of the fiscal year, automatic cuts trigger from programs.

As it stands, and this was confirmed by the Congressional Budget Office, this bill will trigger PAYGO...and included in those cuts, would be 535 BILLION in cuts to mediCARE.

NOT MEDICAID (though there are many cuts to that already in this bill).

This is part of the poison bill. I personally know many Trump supporters who are on Medicare. THIS WILL AFFECT YOU. I am not seeing articles about it yet, but you can watch the video yourself.

Also of note in this bill (and this is just a little bit! there's so much more in this monster):

-Repeals the Clean Air Act, calls for dismantling the EPA, removing emissions standards for vehicles

-limits to state authorities for regulating AI for ten years (even the makers of AI say it needs to be regulated!)

-Defunds the consumer financial protection bureau

-Seeks to give federal central control when states disagree with federal findings (wasn't the justification behind overturning Roe V Wade that we needed more state independence from federal control...?)

-Places all federal agencies under King's....I mean, President's...control (!!!!!)

When I used to lean right, part of what I agreed with was state independence. I still do. Not only does this eliminate that in many ways, but it puts it under PRESIDENTIAL control. And that's all just scratching the surface.

I have already called my representatives. Particularly the cuts to medicare and medicaid are going to hit those republican states hard (including my own), so let them know you are paying attention!

Link to CSPAN feed for Medicare cuts

The AI Jobs Apocalypse is here. But we aren't talking about it.

The AI job disruption is fully here, and I am perturbed by how I don’t see it being talked about. Maybe it’s partially because we are a very binary society, and we aren’t seeing entire career fields being let go. However, we are definitely seeing job fields getting decimated.

What I mean by this is, for development teams where they might have had ten developers before, now they may have 3. And the rest is being covered by reliance on AI. In ONE YEAR, the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, predicts that all programming jobs will be replaced by AI. One year from now! That’s so many high level jobs that will be wiped out.

And that’s just in an industry that I am personally involved in. The same thing is happening across the creative sphere, and in nearly every job that requires a degree that doesn’t require a person to physically be there. The entire white collar labor force will be affected in one way or another, with the majority being “affected” by it in the form of layoffs. Other fields that are highly likely to be disrupted, and are already being affected, are accounting, mathematics, drafting, copywriting, computer graphics (video games and movie productions are already trying to edge AI graphics in to see if you notice), any sort of data processing or paralegal work, medical imaging. And that’s just the beginning.

I know, every technology that comes along that displaces people, has some new field that opens up. But what’s concerning here, is the scale of disruption. There just won’t enough new jobs made to offset the jobs lost. This is going to be a jobs bloodbath, and the effects can already be seen. It’s taking much longer for developers/programmers/technical workers to find a job than it did in years previously. That’s not a coincidence. And it’s also the jobs that required people to go into debt to get degrees in many cases, and now the fields are disappearing.

The darker side of me wonders if part of this “bring manufacturing back to the US” agenda isn’t to try to push people into those manufacturing roles, because there just aren’t going to be educated and skilled jobs at a meaningful level, before we know it. They are skirting saying it, because some the people behind this push, are also the AI developers. So much money is being poured into those efforts, and the people in charge of our government have a vested interest in making AI dominant. For one thing, they want to beat the rest of the world at it (particularly China), which I understand. But the darker part is many of them are billionaires, and will be able to be continually enriched if AI is the backbone of the workforce for our intellectual and technical jobs. The requirements for AI to work on an environmental and technical scale are enormous. I was concerned years ago by how much energy bitcoin mining was eating up, and now this is that issue on steroids. With the addition of provisions into the “Big Beautiful Bill” that Trump and the republicans are trying to pass, that would keep states from regulating AI AT ALL for the next ten years, this is not looking good.

Paired with the push for manufacturing jobs (though I haven’t actually seen much movement towards anyone building new factories here; in fact many investors are now moving plans outside of the US that they were planning on having here, due to our financial instability since March), is the massive cutting of worker protections, Medicaid, restarting wage garnishment and reducing payback plans that had been approved for student loans, and environmental protections.

All of those topics, if you look at them from the perspective of unleashing the AI gods and pushing Americans into menial work, fit together under a very depressing lens. Particularly if you remind yourself of how many of these government changes were brought about by the chainsaw of Elon Musk, the billionaire who has an AI company.

I’ll elaborate. If you reduce EPA regulation, and open up National Parks to development, all of a sudden the environmental problems (huge requirements for electricity and clean water for cooling, for example) for the massive drain that AI is on infrastructure goes away. Now, they also have plenty of new land to purchase and exploit to make data campuses.

If you take away Medicaid, increase the tax burden on all of those under the top earners, remove worker protections in every form, and allow the harshest penalties against student loan debt again (I’ve always thought that this was a form of indentured servitude. You can declare bankruptcy for gambling debts, but not school debt? Why?), who is forced into the positions that are freed up by exporting all the immigrants?

The not rich Americans.

Whose job security and job availability is decreasing at an incredible rate?

The not rich Americans.

The ultra rich are living in a world where they barely even have to see regular people anymore, except for possibly as blurred faces in the crowd when they give speeches. The rate at which the richest accumulated their money during the pandemic exploded, and it is exploding again with the market manipulation that has happened since March.

Now that they don’t need us humans to fulfill jobs, I’ve noticed that many places are treating their workers much worse. Forced back to office policies, worse benefits, increased surveillance of workers whether or not the job is getting done….this is all a symptom of a change in American economy. The push for “manufacturing jobs” is largely a farce, and if it’s not, will take years to happen. Meanwhile, if we aren’t needed for votes anymore, and we aren’t needed for production…where is the power of the average American citizen? This is why we have to claw for it while we can.

One of the issues that I understood during the election to be an issue, that the Democratic Party didn’t, was that there are two “economies”, and the Democrats only acknowledged one. There’s the wealthy economy, which is stocks and bonds and the Fed and inflation, and it’s the one that gets headlines. All of that does affect things downstream, but when an average American talks about “the economy”, they mean the prices of houses, gas, food, and needs. Most Americans don’t invest in the markets at all.

And here’s where this issue is coming back again. The Republicans understood those differences, and still do…but don’t care. As this regime has shown, they don’t care if the “regular person economy” if suffering right now. Tariffs are jacking up prices (e.g.: the standoffs with Walmart, the announcement Subaru just made about raising their prices, and on and on), and they don’t care. Because they already got the votes they need. And what will benefit the “rich person economy”? It’s not bringing down the cost of groceries; it’s dominating in software and AI. And the rest of us, unfortunately, are chattel in that game.

Big Tech is not called Big Human. They don’t care about us. Look at the “dead internet” theory. Have you heard about this? It’s that as algorithms, AI, and bots have proliferated online, most of our experience as users means we aren’t even actually interacting with humans. Meta even has AI “agents” that are fake accounts meant to drum up interactions to keep us online….because humans aren’t cutting it. They want your attention, but not you.

As the generative AI models have continued to grow, a concerning trend has come out. They are “hallucinating” at a higher rate. That means, they are making up data and scenarios that they aren’t supposed to, almost a “ghost in the machine” effect. It’s confusing the developers, because they expected that hallucinations would decrease, but the opposite is happening. Which, to me, just highlights how we are children playing with fire. There’s another concerning side effect, where people are using AI as a therapist and friend. I see how that happens; it’s meant to make you like it, so it puts things in a way meant to make you feel good. Unfortunately, that also means that it will just make stuff up for its user. That can be handled with new parameters, but that brings us to another thing: AI is supremely editable. It’s very easy to manipulate or change data as someone who owns an AI tool, which means introducing falsehoods and bias is even easier than it was before. And when that information comes from a “trusted” source, that’s not allowed to be regulated? Well that’s not a good thing, if you are someone who cares about humanity or freedom.

Meanwhile, there’s the issue of AI getting smarter than us and breaking out of its confines. Will a lack of oversight help that? I don’t think so, do you?

For years I’ve been saying that we need to come up with a universal basic income plan for the AI jobs disruption (I first wrote about it in 2016), and we have only moved backwards. Just last month, Bill Gates started calling for the same thing. But without industries even acknowledging that this is an issue, it’s frightening to see how quickly the average American will be impacted by this, without having any sort of societal safety net at all.

This has been a lot of doom and gloom, but there are upsides to AI. I think that if we harness it in the right way, it could change humanity for the better. It could make suggestions for change and optimization, without the emotional baggage of a human’s biases and desires. I love the idea of that applied to the climate crisis, trade deficits, and medical science, for example. But an unregulated AI industry won’t result in that, as clearly the AI gods are demonstrating. They want to be able to follow their ideas, with no interference or input from the world they are changing (and, in case of the environment, ruining). Does that seem fair to you? It doesn’t for me. Transparency and safeguards are needed in this industry, and they are needed now. We need a blanket rule on ethics, bias, transparency, and on keeping experimental AI away from the unknowing public without safety measures and guardrails. (Did you read about the unethical experiment run by Standford on Reddit? It used AI agents to influence the opinions of people who thought they were talking to other humans, and it worked. I’ll post a link to that scary stuff below).

Contact your lawmakers about your concerns, these measures are being debated now. And hopefully we can get people involved in government who understand technology more than only being enriched by it. And remember, if you’re reading this, it’s not you vs me, no matter your politics. It’s the super rich against the American citizen.

Google CEO quote about AI replacing programmers in one year:

https://san.com/cc/former-google-ceo-predicts-ai-will-replace-most-programmers-in-a-year/

An estimate of how much power generative AI takes: https://www.theverge.com/24066646/ai-electricity-energy-watts-generative-consumption

Ban on regulating AI: https://apnews.com/article/ai-regulation-state-moratorium-congress-39d1c8a0758ffe0242283bb82f66d51a

Unethical Reddit Standord and University of Pennsylvania experiment: https://www.androidheadlines.com/2025/04/reddit-ai-experiment-no-consent

4000 jobs lost to AI in May alone: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ai-job-losses-artificial-intelligence-challenger-report/

Dead Internet theory: https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/what-is-the-dead-internet-theory/

#AI #government

POLITICS: Shooting our economy in the face continues

So now he's crashed our economy. China is pushing back, and while the numbers don't make sense (we import far more from them than they do on us, so reciprocal tariffs back at us don't do much), I think they are putting their foot down to try to put a stop to all this insanity. I keep seeing people act like Trump is playing 3D chess. No he's not, he's a toddler thinking that he's going to beat Kasparov with tic-tac-toe strategy, because he just learned about it on the playyground. Rather than pretending this man, who can't even string coherent sentences together and bankrupted casinos, is some sort of economic savant, how about we acknowledge the more likely scenario: that he's a narcissistic mad man who eliminated all people that would put guard rails around him, and gets off on crushing the world under his heel? He already made "deals" with Canada and Mexico his first term; then he renegotiated them at the beginning of this one (by which I mean, as insultingly as possible tossed them out the window), and now he has thrown them out again. I do enjoy seeing the finance and tech bros, who put Trump in again because they thought he'd be "good for the economy", losing their minds right now. If I have to be on this sinking ship, I want to see the oligarchs flailing in the water among the icebergs like the rest of us. Seeing them grasp at straws, trying to apply logic to a mad man's whims, is laughable. I pulled all my money out the market before this happened, because I just didn't trust it. I didn't trust the bounce yesterday. And I don't trust anything now. How can you have any stability with someone who lies constantly, listens to any poor idea that flits by his window on a whim, and has no loyalty? Maybe this will awaken some of Congress enough to assert their powers, there are certainly grumbles. We shall see. Those who are saying this isn't a big deal, don't understand the economy at all. This will hurt, ALL of us. It may take a few weeks for you to feel it...but then again, magybenot. And once again, I am so embarrassed by how we are treating those who have been our allies for decades. In a silver lining, it looks like the Trump/Elon falling out I've been so eagerly awaiting may be on the horizon. After Elon threw all that money at the Wisconsin election and lost, I think that Trump now sees him as a "loser" (one of Trump's most eloquent and favorite put-downs, tapping in at a whole two syllables). I haven't seen the two of them in public together since that election, though I may have missed it. Elon is openly blasting the tariff massacre on X. Certainly doesn't look like a honeymoon, at any rate. The death of expertise may result in the death of us all. Does anyone else find amusement in so many people overlooking all the glaring terrors in Trump's personality and voting for him "for the economy", when he literally said he'd do this? It's schrodinger's politician: if he says what you like he's telling the truth, if he says what you don't like he's just bluffing. I can't think of one thing this administration has done that I've supported. They've taken problems that I acknowledge should be addressed (government bloat, figuring out how to balance domestic spending with international interest), but it's like pointing out a smudge on a faberge egg and the solution was to smash it with a Gallagher hammer. So stupid. So stupid.

DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HIS DICTATOR PARADE FOR $92 MILLION!!!

Again, where is DOGE here??

POLITICS: Is the "Great" he was talking about, another Great Depression?

It's ironic, because so many people I knew who supported Trump, knew that he had issues...but said they "wanted a business man in charge of the economy". And now, here we are, with our economy and trade status lying in the streets bleeding out. The math that they are claiming to use, doesn't even make sense. Trade doesn't operate on a tit-for-tat schedule. The world, once again, is too complicated for such a simplistic idea, put forth by simpletons. Some places can't afford what we export (for example Lesotho, where the average worker makes less than $5 a die, but they export diamonds to us...there was never going to be parity. But we have hit them with the highest tariffs of 50%). And we tend to import a lot, because hitherto, we had been a successful economy with money to spend. We can't grow bananas or saffron here, but we can import them. Or could. I don't understand why I'm not hearing more from the "I'm only voting for him because of the economy" folks yet. If you are one of them, please DM me to let me know how you're feeling these days. I am truly curious.

The proof is in the pudding on this. Our enemies received no tariffs (Russia, noticeably didn't. The excuse is that there's not much trade...but that didn't stop them from laying tariffs elsewhere, did it? Meanwhile the famous unpopulated island full of penguins did), and Europe and our allies got slammed. I really hope that someday the world will believe that we can move past all this. People are actually buying the excuses that these places placed 50% tariffs on our goods, when no, most places have somewhere around 2-4%, unless it's a protected trade, which is acceptable. You can go to the state websites for every country and find the true tariff rate, and I encourage you to do so.

The idea that all of this is to bring manufacturing back is another child's explanation at solving an adult's world. Americans aren't going to start working in factories again writ large. It will take YEARS to stand that all up, and with all the added production costs, the capital required is incredible. What we needed to do is continue to push on tech, science, and medicine education, and incentivize keeping on the forefront. DOGE cuts mean that we have actually given up a lot of ground on that as well.

I think Trump has lost his mind. Please go and watch speeches of his from 2016 and compare it to now: he is definitely mentally much different. Biden had mental issues, and they were hidden, and I hated that. But at least he had surrounded himself with competent people who kept the train on the tracks. For all those who rightly griped about Biden's mental acuity, you should be equally if not MORE SO worried about this. This man has followed the dictator's playbook and is surrounded by sycophants and yes men, and this won't stop until he is gone. There are no adults in the room with him. He told us he was going to use a bunch of tariffs, and despite every credible economist saying it was a terrible idea, people voted for it. And now our lives will get worse.

Thankfully, most of Congress DOES still care about the market, and there are signs that even some Republicans are remembering how much they love to flip flop, only in this case it's for the good, and potentially they will take back some of the powers they never should have given up.

In other news, continuing his calvacade of "Oh I saw this person when I was watching tv late night by myself! They'd be perfect!", Dr. Oz (who shouldn't even have a medical license anymore after all the fraud he's committed), is now in charge of medicare and medicaid. Big Bird will be in charge of NTSB tomorrow, I can only assume, unless he is determined to be "too woke", which seems to be the only disqualifier.

IG at DOD started an investigation into Pete Hegseth's use of non-secure platforms for official business. That sounds like accountability, so I'm sure the IG will be fired tomorrow. Waltz was also found to be conducting sensitive business via Gmail and MORE signal chat groups.

The economy tanked so badly that yesterday Trump's state media, Fox News, for the first time in their 28 years, removed the stock ticker from the screen while markets were open. Because they wouldn't want you to know how bad this is. Honestly, that bit made me laugh.

Are we great again yet? Because all this greatness is really making me exhausted. So many people who voted for this mess probably have tanked 401ks now. It's a bloodbath out there.

Phew. Okay. I feel a bit better having bled that poison, so I'll close my bitterness with a bit of sweetness.

The signs are growing that Elon is wearing out his welcome. There have been leaks from the White House alluding to it, and he poured a bunch of money into the Wisconsin judge election, and lost by a huge amount (what a great illustration of how much money he could be taxed and not even miss it. Taxing that sort of wealth to A: help society and B: Keep these psychos from interfering with the rest of us is a lesson I really hope we relearn from this). Noticeably, the dancing muppet wasn't there for the announcement of tariffs; he's been a good sock puppet lately, so that was interesting. Does anyone else get a real "Rasputin" feeling from the guy these days?

Senator Cory Booker did a 25 hour+ speech to protest Trump's authoritarian blitzkrieg, and I found it inspiring and rejuvenating. It was good to see someone DO something and sacrifice time and comfort, to reflect how dire this time is. The congress races in Florida went to republicans, which was expected; they are deep red districts. However, the race was MUCH closer than expected. Congress is finally starting to take bipartisan action to push back against Trump. It's taken them long enough, but come on. And the courts continue to be the heroes, stopping so many of these illegal actions left and right. Trump's approval numbers are Pay attention to your local judge elections, look how much they matter!

Finally, please go to the Hands Off website and look up your local protest for tomorrow. It's a good morale builder, seeing how many people feel the same way you do. It's an American tradition. And showing how you feel MATTERS. That's why American media is trying not to show it You aren't alone! Of course, be safe, be peaceful, and don't mess up anyone's stuff. Take a mask.

Ta-ta, more to come soon.

POLITICS: Updates on February 19

Biden posted “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” on February 15.

In the middle of the night on February 17, he signed an executive order saying that only the Attorney General and the President have the power to determine what is law in the Executive Branch. This order also puts several independent agencies underneath the executive branch, once more consolidating presidential power and skirting all checks and balances.

George Soros continues with his mission of firing thousands of federal workers from federal agencies with no oversight, despite massive conflicts of interest with his own companies’ investigations. He also continues to steal American’s private protected data from every agency he comes in contact with.

…..see what I did there? Do the name changes make you feel differently? Because they shouldn’t. Those are all actions that have been taken by the Trump and Musk recently.

To continue with the laundry list of things you may have missed, here are a few upheavals:

-DOGE/Musk mistakenly fired hundreds of DOE workers who are in charge of safeguarding our stockpiles, and now are scrambling to rehire them, despite the fact that they don’t have current contact information for them.

-DOGE/Musk fired 10% of NASA employees mistakenly, and is scrambling to rehire them.

-DOGE/Musk fired the HHS team responsible for developing a vaccine for Bird Flu, which is running rampant across the US, and is why eggs are so expensive. They are now trying to reverse those firings.

And those aren’t even all the mistakes, there are more. I’m not against cutting government spending, but as I’ve previously stated, doing it haphazardly is not only cruel to people who have dedicated their lives to this country, but wastes money when done incorrectly. To pretend that any “audit” is happening is ridiculous. It’s merely cutting names from rosters, with no oversight of experts, to achieve political goals. There is no way people can spend a day or two at a federal agency, that they have no experience with, and get a grasp on every program. I think Elon’s goal is to cut the red tape investigations that have hindered him. NHTSA has six investigations against Tesla for safety with its self driving. SEC has fined Musk multiple times and is currently investigating him for failing to disclose Twitter stock purchases before he bought the company. He is under investigation by the FAA for Space-X’s recent mishaps and how they dangerously exploded. His companies Tesla, Space-X, and Neuralink are under investiation by the USDA and the Department of Labor.

ALL of those agencies are getting hammered and cut by Musk.

Any of the “corruption” he’s claimed so far, are just programs he doesn’t approve of. No actual legal corruption, no charges have been filed for corruption. ALL of the numbers he’s posted, came from https://www.usaspending.gov/, a government website that the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 created. Is that truly worth $7 million+ a week for this?

Ultimately, this is a distraction. The budget that the Republicans have put forth INCREASE the deficit by over 4.5 trillion, a larger deficit than Biden ran. The proof is in the pudding: they are having to request a debt ceiling of 4 trillion for the plan. There will be cuts to health and medicaid, medicare, the Affordable Care Act, and a 100 billion INCREASE in defense spending, by far one of the largest expenses in our budget…despite promised cuts to it. I find that particularly odd, since we are now becoming insultingly isolationist and are completely abandoning Ukraine…and apparenlty becoming besties with Russia, which is insanely unamerican. Almost all of the tax cuts are for the wealthiest, and corporations.

Notably absent is the promised removal of taxes on tips, or the removal of taxes on overtime, which he repeatedly promised. We can chock that up to “lies to get you into bed”, along with any effort to lower the cost of groceries, or eggs, or housing. Out of all the flurry of executive orders and actions, NONE of it has involved any of those things he promised the average American. Tariffs will also amount to a tax increase on Americans as well, let’s not forget.

The DOGE cuts are a drop in the bucket, though they are seeding a lot of panic and pain for people, which seems to be par for the course in this sadistic world. There seems to be an idea that’s taken hold in America, where for something to work, it must inflict pain on someone else. I personally blame the decline of the middle class and the forced serf narrative we seem to be embracing. I think there’s a lot of redirected pain, and it’s bringing out the worst in people.

I’ll wrap up this bit with two things: Ukraine and why I think this tumult won’t last.

I am so ashamed of our country for abandoning Ukraine, and not only doing that, but throwing Europe out, and not even allowing Ukraine to come to the table for its own future. I’m not shocked, because Trump clearly has a hard-on for Putin. He loves strong men, and he is abandoning our allies so that he can be the top of what he sees as the “strong men” in the world….ie the evil dictators. It won’t work out that way, of course, they will use him and mock him, like they do now. But clearly this is another issue brought to the forefront by the “You could have saved us a lot of heartache if you would have gone to therapy” category. We could have less of an active presence in global wars, AND not make every ally we’ve spent the last century cultivating upset. I truly don’t recognize us at this moment, and I hate that we are once again abandoning people we made promises to. With eliminating any departments that oversee things like corruption, bribery, foreign influence, or election interference, partnered with insulting our allies and cozying up to the worst human rights violators in the world, I feel that we are seeing the culmination of an intelligence op coming to fruition. I can’t make sense of it any other way.

The last bit is, I don’t think this chaos is sustainable. Republicans in Congress are begging for exceptions to the cuts that are affecting their states, and of course the red states are the largest recipients of the social welfare programs. It only takes a handful of them jumping off the train to stop this tidal wave. Trump stated that Elon is not the head of DOGE yesterday, which is a head scratcher….but probably meant to distance liability. I think that Elon is in over his head, and is going to be taking the fall for this once the good will has run out. And Trump isn’t big on good will towards anyone, let alone other narcissists who steal the air from rooms HE is trying to steal the air from. Finally, at some point these cuts are going to directly impact Trump’s base, and since he doesn’t care about getting elected again, I don’t think he’ll care. But Congress will, since they DO want to be reelected. The pace of movement has slowed some, and that’s a good sign; they seem to be running out of steam. Hang in there and take care of those around you. I’ll check in again soon.

POLITICS: Great analysis on security risks from DOGE's poorly configured systems, and the siphoning of YOUR DATA.

Great analysis on security risks from DOGE's poorly configured systems, and the siphoning of YOUR DATA. Link is below.

I’ve asked hypothetically, and now I ask rather literally: If Trump or Elon were acting as agents of Russia, what more could they do now than they already are, to erode America? Alienating our allies, tanking our trade with illogical tariffs, hollowing out all support the American people, withdrawing from our obligations, and siphoning our most sensitive data with no restrictions or explanation.

https://cyberintel.substack.com/p/doge-exposes-once-secret-government

POLITICS: A breakdown on the effectivity of DOGE's illegal cutting of programs, and how much more effective tax increases on the wealthiest would be (even if much weaker than we've had previously)

For all the disruption these indiscriminate cuts to personnel are causing, how much are we cutting from the deficit? If we fired all of them, we would save 4% of the federal budget. That's every federal employee, being laid off.

These cuts are painful, but largely, theater, in terms of reducing cost.( In terms of material loss, they will be huge.) If you spread the cuts out equally over the year, it would be less than a half day's worth of savings. But you know what? I ran some numbers. Do you know what could HALVE the federal debt for the year?

Taxing all those who make over 652,000 at a 50% tax rate.

Currently their tax rate is ~25%, and that's not including investments, and borrowing against "worth", which is how much of the rich get things without spending money (which, I think taxing unrealized gains in that case makes a lot of sense. We are taxing unrealized gains now on normal citizens, when our property taxes go up for the current assessed value of a home, even when we haven't sold it), OR deductions. The actual federal rate for most of them is WAY lower than the means they are actualizing.

Did you know that from the thirties until Reagan came in, the tax rate for the highest earners was up to 90%?? Literally Reagan came in, and it was 50%. Here's some data:

1944-1945 (WWII): 94% top marginal tax rate on income over $200,000 (equivalent to about $3.5 million today).

1950s - Early 1960s: The top marginal tax rate remained around 91% on income over $200,000 (single filers) or $400,000 (married).

And I don't remember there not being rich people during that time, and there were plenty of mansions built. Even during that time, most high earners paid way less in taxes, due to loopholes. But the laws were there.

Currently, NOT INCLUDING DEDUCTIONS, the top 1% pay ~858 billion a year at their effective 26% tax rate, which many of them dodge since our judicial system is a pay-to-play system. Of course.

If they paid a 50% tax rate, much lower than throughout history, they would pay 1.65 trillion. The yearly running deficit is 1.6 trillion for 2024. If they paid a 50% tax rate, it would reduce that yearly deficit to 792 billion, effectively nearly halving it.

So why isn't DOGE saying tax the top earners more? After all, if they aren't benefiting from being a part of American society, why are they here? Why not run their businesses and homes from a coral atoll in the pacific, or mars? And if they are so concerned about our dropping birth rate, guess what: pay into a system that supports families, and it will be more likely to produce workers for your system. Or quit whining about us not wanting to bring children into a worse world.

Because they get much more from our stability and legal protections than they want to pay in. And I think it's time they reflect that. We already had a douchebags 1.0 with the robber barons, it's time to stop douchebags 2.0.

Some updates on current American events. VERY POLITICAL, so dodge if you must.

A Preamble: The following content will be very political. However, I am a citizen of the United States, and as a student of history, someone who read dystopian novels obsessively as a youth, and as someone with over 15 years experience (coming up on 20) as an analyst and other roles in our Defense and Intelligence Communities, I just cannot keep quiet about what I see right now. I can’t stay on that side of history. I’ve been posting on my own personal social media about current events and what I see, but I think it’s reached the point that I need to share it a bit wider. It might help differentiate signal to noise for someone. And since disrupting signal to noise is literally the whole plan for this administration right now, I’m getting out of my comfort zone. These are largely reposts from the last few days. I hope they help. There will be more political posts while we are in this era.

Trump made large cuts to the VA yesterday, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. He has stated multiple times his contempt for veterans. So far, the deep cuts in the budget are actually starting to affect his base, and he doesn’t seem to be holding back. Farmers in red states are some of the biggest recipients of government handouts (I wonder if any of them find a classic rightwing adage helpful here, when people complain that the poverty level minimum wage isn’t enough: “If your job doesn’t pay well, get another one”, or does that seem as pat and unfeeling coming back, as it does when originally stated?), Alabama’s utilities received federal funding to subsidize utilities for low income earners, and now they have received $100 additions to their bills. Again, most of those people voted for this.

The National Parks received large firings of staff yesterday, including forest fire prevention staff. Kennedy got confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services, with his expertise as a guy “who does his research”. Bird flu is going to be a thing, even more than it is already. And we are on our own. What’s good is, the American Medical Association is doing updates on their youtube channels about it to keep people informed. There are also now “Alt CDC” accounts on social media that you can follow that make updates that the real CDC would do if it wasn’t getting crushed and taken over by people whose expertise is being Joe Rogan fans and googling anything except medical papers.

There’s a trend now for government departments that are getting tanked to set up a “shadow” account to keep the work and information going for those who want to be informed. I think the Democrats should totally embrace that and formalize it more, to remind people of what we could officially have if they were back in power. They have a huge messaging problem right now; they got away from trying to make life better for most Americans, or at least communicating that they were, and focused on problems with narrower scope, and it hurt them. But more about that later.

More tariffs coming online for allies are potentially going to cause more disruption. We are pulling out of supporting Ukraine, and already gave away several things at the table to Russia before talks started.

Again, overall goals are ones that I support. I believe that we should cut government spending (though the new proposed Republican budget earmarks MORE money for defense, which I don’t think is needed. There is so much pork in that department), though I think we should be careful to not throw the baby out with the bathwater and wreck good programs. For one thing, collateral human damage sucks, and second, it costs MORE waste to stand things back up after we’ve shut them down by mistake. I think actual auditors should be involved, not just rich drug addicts and scrapers. I DO think Europe needs to contribute more to its own defense, and they’ve gotten comfortable with taking advantage of our deep defense budget to defend themselves, while not reciprocating. But I don’t think leaving Ukraine in the balance is a good idea. Russia has been fully occupied, or nearly fully occupied, with that fight for 3 years. I think if its off the table, they will once again interfere elsewhere, and be emboldened to do it. That’s part of why I think it’s been a masterful stroke the way we’ve supported Ukraine over the last few years, and we will notice the difference immediately when we don’t. I also believe on principle it was a very American thing to do. We are abandoning our position of being a leader, but still seem to expect respect as though we are. I don’t think the repercussions from that are going to be as pleasant as the administration thinks.

Several states filed a huge lawsuit against Doge yesterday, so we will see how that goes. So far the “audits” have seemed to largely be stealing sensitive data still, with no disclosure of what is done with it, and no oversight. Also, the doge website itself got hacked last night. If you can’t secure a simple webfront, I really question your coding abilities, hitlerjugend. We spent 7.4 million dollars this WEEK on ~100 DOGE staff, and 7 million last week. I personally see some pretty deep inefficiences and conflicts there, how about you? Oh the “audits” also seem to be naming existing programs that Elon doesn’t like and calling them corrupt, but not actually showing corruption. So far those are approved programs; if they need to be cut, do it the right way, don’t claim corruption when it’s not.

I don’t see how any of this is making prices of groceries go down, which was supposed to be a day one thing. Inflation is still ticking up, and tariffs are just another tax on Americans dressed up in a "look over there!" bow. And I’d like to know, from all this “saving” of government tax dollars, where that money is supposed to go now. I don't see anything going to correct the enormous wealth gaps, which I think is at the root of what many people are unhappy with, though it may be obfuscated.

Anyway, it’s all exhausting, but I’ve had some people contact me who say they voted for this and regret it, and that gives me hope. And you give me hope. There are 330 million of us, and we have a lot of power. And it’s a lot harder to keep dark in the darkness these days.

Shadows Move In Where Faith Used to Be: Chinese Apps and the American People

There is so much to write about at this moment, it was rather hard to for me to narrow down a topic. Fortunately, in the past couple days, a new story hit the media out of nowhere that made the decision for me. All that being said: have you heard about DeepSeek?

It’s a Chinese generative AI app, based upon the same precepts as ChatGPT. Literally it was built using that software. The claim is that it took ~$6 million to make, compared to the running costs of about half a billion for the other generative AI models. Once this news hit the market, the blue chips crashed and shook the US tech world.

There are plenty of fun side topics that we’ll cover with this one. For the first part, I’ll go into two of my favorite things: schadenfreude and hubris. The past few weeks, schadenfreude has been getting me through the news cycle. I know it’s not a virtue, trust me. But I am only human, and with the depressing news we have lately, it’s sort of been a good feeling to see the people who made assumptions get wet-fish slapped with reality. You’ll notice, with the flurry of Executive Orders the American President has made lately, he didn’t manage to leave the Ukraine war in the first 24 hours as promised, nor has he done anything to lower the price of groceries, eggs, or gas. And, in fact, he has said he won’t (although he says he will lower drill restrictions in protected areas, that won’t drive gas costs down; though, if there was more competition from green initiatives that he’s cutting, it would). I just bring those specific topics up because the people who voted for him claimed it was due to those topics, and they are already dead on arrival. As the rest of us knew they would be. So seeing the inevitable happen, has been the spark of joy I’ve been taking from an overwhelmingly dark time.

The other bit, hubris, is aimed directly at the tech bro overlord douche cadre. I’ve always thought to be a billionaire is a sign of a personal failing; it means you didn’t take care of those around you on the way up. And if you continue to be a billionaire, it means that you still aren’t taking care of people like you should. They could use the dearth of wealth to solve, or nearly solve, all issues we have. But they don’t. And now that we are in this new administration, they immediately bowed down, got in line, and showed us their true natures. Happy for years to stand quietly behind the scenes pulling strings, they have completely capitulated to our new system and tossed out equality or any other moral standing, in the hopes of favor and succor from above. And man, that really made me angry. They don’t even pretend to want to help society now. Google announced yesterday it’s changing its maps to show the Gulf of Mexico inaccurately renamed to Gulf of America, Facebook is going to stop trying to limit hate speech and disinformation at all, and Elon….well, look at that goose stepper up there. He’s just missing the mustache.

So when China announced DeepSeek, I immediately had two responses: wariness because I know why China is doing this, but then there was schadenfreude at the tech sector freaking out. These guys thought they were untouchable, they put themselves on pantheons and thought they finally made it. They could show us their matching Lex Luthor tattoos finally! They own everything and there’s nothing we can do about it!

And then…BAM. China, playing its long game of stealing and silence, tossed this embarrassing grenade right in their sausage fest. MUAHAHAHAHA! Their stocks tanked, billions were lost. The initiative they just announced last week for “AI dominance” suddenly looked, in the daylight, as though it had gotten dressed in a dark room and didn’t check the mirror on the way out. Wait, you all need half a trillion? They did it with 6 million! They kicked the stool out from under the American tech bros, and man was it nice to see them fall.

I also find it vindicating that there are huge moral quandaries with generative AI that haven’t been addressed at all by the government or the tech oligarchy: how they scrape the data of humans to create their content, but don’t compensate them for it. How their output is displacing the careers of real humans, without compensating the system it’s stealing from. How it takes a huge amount of power to run the systems. All of these issues may hit those dudes differently, now that China is wearing the shoes they’ve been sporting.

However…now that we’ve gotten past the flash of “weeeeee”, I’ll move on to my larger emotional response. If you’re American, this isn’t something to truly celebrate. It will be another vector for China to steal our ideas, code, and initiative; after all, that’s how they were able to make DeepSeek in the first place. There’s even evidence that they are using black market NVIDIA chips to make it, since they are restricted from buying them. This comes shortly after the revelations about the two 6th generation fighter jets they purport to have, which if the claims are true, means they have beat us to market. Again, this is based off of data that they stole from us (I remember they hacked the F-35 program while I worked there, and stole plans. And it certainly wasn’t the only time). They excel at taking other people’s ideas and building on them, and we are seeing those chickens come home to roost. For years, they have been thinking strategically about global markets, while we continued to only think tactically.

First we exported our manufacturing to them, hollowing out our middle class at the enrichment of the few. Trickle down economics somehow still hasn’t worked, in the 40 years since we started trying to get it to work. Any minute now, right? So our populace is unhappier and more tired, and broker, than ever before. China has executed extremely high levels of industrial espionage against us, and continues to do so, at a prolific scale. They’ve infiltrated our extremely sensitive government systems time and time again. And that doesn’t even include the actual spies that have infiltrated our universities, to pick our brains about our newest ideas.

So now, we have the results coming to market. 6th gen fighters, DeepSeek, and TikTok. I was going to write about the TikTok ban a few weeks ago, but wanted to see things play out. I’m now extremely happy I did, because it pairs perfectly with current events.

TikTok is a dangerous tool, as the government has been saying (and the American people ignoring), for years. It’s no coincidence that the version China allows its own citizens to use is far different from our own. It’s meant to dull us down and occupy our attention, so that we don’t accomplish anything with drive. It’s a time suck. It pushes disinformation. It ruins our attention span. It also gathers massive amounts of data on us. I personally predict that at some point, China will use that data to make digital AI agents to “befriend” users and then use PSYOPs on them to further degrade their loyalty to America and one another. I believe that they will use the data from DeepSeek to do the same; it gathers an incredible amount of data from the moment you download the app to your phone.

The TikTok ban, which Trump originally proposed (and I supported!) has now been stymied by Trump. He claims Microsoft are in talks to acquire the American arm of the business, and we shall see what comes of it. It’s been turned back on for American users. But what’s been fascinating to me has been watching the response online of the average user.

Overwhelmingly, I have seen Americans who use TikTok blatantly say, “So what if they have my data. American companies already have it all and sell it to anyone who wants it.” And you know what? Solid point.

This is a sign of the breech of trust between American government and its citizens. For many years now, I’ve been a vocal supporter of privacy laws like the EU has, and of harsh penalties for companies that fail to prevent security breaches. Neither has gained any traction in the US. Since the government believes its job is no longer to protect the average citizen, but instead to provide the opportunity to any sap who wants to bilk a buck from his neighbor the protection to do so, Americans are hugely data compromised.

Many times a year I am notified that some site or another has been breached. Companies are very poor custodians of customer data nearly across the board, and there is nearly no restriction on the data they can collect. There was just a huge data breach of an app schools use called “Powerschool”, announced last week. That data, among other things, included Social Security numbers of students and teachers, affected up to 70 million users, and was all achieved by one admin’s compromised credentials being used to login. As someone with software development and security experience, there are so many red flags here. Why was ONE lowly admin able to access the social security numbers of that many people? Why was no one alerted at that massive of a pull? Why were they stored in unencrypted areas, instead of being accessed individually with a key? And, why will nothing be done about it? This stuff is not rocket science; it’s lazy engineering because they companies don’t have the incentive.

If we made it so that there were fines and jail time for stolen data, security would improve immediately. But they get away with it. If someone came in my house, and stole my social security card, they would face fines and jail time. Why should the digital data be any different? If a bank lost my money due to their poor security, I would be protected. Why is this different?

In my option, the American government has done a terrible job of protecting us from this. Part of that is they don’t feel the pressure; part of it is laziness; part of it is the fact that most of Congress has no clue how technology works because they are dinosaurs and lawyers. But I also think the tech sector has done a terrible job of being good citizens as well. And now, guess what’s happened: They’ve done such a bad job, that people think China has their interests at heart more than America. And for me, it’s hard to say they seem totally wrong. China certainly doesn’t have their interests at heart, not at all. But it’s getting harder to be convinced that our own country’s government cares about them, either. And that is so dangerous.

In this moment, the users have the power, and they don’t realize it. We need to have people who understand current issues step up to the plate to protect us. We need to be on the same team again, and by that I mean ALL American citizens need to be protected, not just the rich. In this moment of chaos and terror, I’m not sure what will happen. But at some point, Trump used to be convinced that TikTok and China were dangerous. And he need to remember that they still are. We also need to stand with our true allies again, and make data and security standards with them. If we don’t stand with them, someone else will, and nature abhors a vacuum. I don’t like this isolationist stance we are moving toward; the world is too interconnected for it to be feasible. I have hope that this will be realized again at some point.

Please don’t download those apps. Please don’t give your data and your attention to bad actors. And while we’re at it, contact your Congress people and let them know your concerns about data, and about the overreach of our tech sector. And if you care about any of these topics, please consider helping do something to turn this around. Run for office, use your voice, speak up. We need people who care about change to make it; it’s happened before and the time is perfect for it to happen again.

As always, thanks for reading. Please add me to your RSS feed and share, and contact me if you like. I’d love to hear from you. Times are scary but not impossible. We are in it together. And, I hope you enjoy seeing the tech bro coalition with their bloody teeth this week (I sure am). Like Mike Tyson says, ”Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the mouth.” Maybe they’ll realize they need to take care of Americans if they want Americans to take care of them. Or maybe we need to make them realize it.

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Call No Man A Hero While He Still Breathes

Yesterday, Vulture released a very well-written, and very damning, article about Neil Gaiman. I highly recommend you read it, though it has terribly disturbing information. If you aren’t aware, Neil Gaiman is an extremely popular fiction author; some of his works of note are Good Omens and the comic book Sandman, both of which have active series on Amazon and Netflix respectively. He’s known for his stories with darker worlds and tones, worlds where danger is very real and spares no one (many of his stories are written, or partially written, from the perspective of children having to confront a terrifying world). His stories are unique, empathetic, and well-written. He’s been considered a genre leader for years.

The article went into allegations that have come out in the last year of sexual assault and abuse. It started with a podcast that interviewed his accusers, and then other articles and podcasts followed. Of particular note was Gaiman’s silence when the allegations where first made, and then his responses of regret…not, one will note, of denial.

In the literary world, the fall of this leviathan has been particularly shocking because of the lack of allegations previously despite an active career since the eighties (though the allegations do reach back that far), and the fact that Gaiman has claimed to be a feminist, and is known for championing women.

Unfortunately, as any female can avow, it’s not just men who have “creep” tattooed on their foreheads who are dangerous. And it would appear Gaiman is just one of the millions of “wolves in sheep’s clothing” that prey on women in this world. I fully believe the accounts of the women, and find them absolutely horrific. He clearly uses his power and wealth to find women he can manipulate and hurt, and does so with apparent abandon.

I don’t want to get into the details here too much, but some high level overview includes:

Cheating on both of his wives, despite the second marriage even being open

Regularly finding extremely young fans at events and coercing them into sexual situations. This in itself doesn’t seem to bad on the surface, until you read about the type of sexual encounters that Neil seems to thrive on: Extremely sadistic sex without consent or safeguards, especially with those not used to a BDSM lifestyle. If you use sadism without constraints or consent, that is just abuse.

Abusing his positions of power to keep women in financial trouble in positions of weakness to be easily exploited (two of the women had agreements of employment with him, that he then ignored and abused, and willingly exploited their fears of him taking away their homes if they didn’t comply with painful sex that they said they did not want)

Fostering a self-deprecating and “safe” persona for women, which was a front to prey on them behind closed doors.

Committing abusive sexual acts to woman IN FRONT OF HIS CHILD, who was awake and aware. Ugh.

And that’s just the surface. To be clear, there’s one discussion to be had about consenting adults in positions of different power and what they want (for example, an older and wealthier famous person being with a very young and broke not famous person). But that isn’t the discussion appropriate for this situation. Specifically at play here is the abuse, and the fact that Gaiman essentially copped to it all by saying he had “regrets about his conduct”. But not a denial.

I’ve been a fan of Neil Gaiman’s work since the mid-nineties. I first read the Sandman comics, then bumped into Neverwhere on my school’s library shelves. I read the story of a different London and loved it. The bits of history that were referenced, the odd and quirky characters, the darkness with bits of light: I was immediately enraptured. I then read Good Omens, the apocalyptic comedy collaboration with Terry Pratchett, and got completely absorbed by American Gods when it was released a few years later. There were always uncomfortable scenes, but that was part of what drew me in. Life has dark parts that we can’t avoid or flinch away from, and I liked that Gaiman’s writing acknowledged that. Sometimes the endings were happy, sometimes neutral, sometimes…dark. And that reflected life to me, with a bit more magic and mystery thrown in. I don’t buy the idea that some are touting now, that we should have seen this all coming because he had dark scenes in his books. Artists are capable of projecting darkness without acting on it, I always have and will believe that. Unfortunately, some of them DO. And, Gaiman is apparently one of them.

As a woman, this whole situation is so frustrating to me. I’m no stranger to people that I look up to letting me down. By your forties, that’s happened a lot to everyone. There have been so many falls from grace. But the fact that Gaiman had made it through my entire adulthood unscathed, had given me a sense of relative ease to his behavior (although I’ve been a part of this world too long to ever completely believe that any rich, powerful, famous man is incapable of terrible things). I’ve met him at a book signing in Chicago when I was in college. He was kind and warm to me, and flirted lightly about my unique name. I took my signed book and went home, feeling good about the whole thing.

Now, in this case I’m seeing most people believe the women, but I do still see some of that doubt that comes out every time a woman accuses a famous and successful man of horrible things. It amazes me that so many seem to think there is some huge advantage for a woman to accuse a man of sexual assault. The conviction rates are incredibly low: less than 4% in the United States. There’s only a 50% chance that there will even be an arrest. And according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, somewhere between 2 and 10% of sexual assault claims are false. Here are more statistics from RAINN, and here from the National Sexual Violence Research Center. The public loves to side with the accused (I think I hear more about “Let’s wait to see if they get convicted, innocent until proven guilty” far more regarding sexual assault than I do for other crimes), despite the overwhelming odds that A: The guilty will be proven innocent statistically and B: The odds are overwhelming that the accuser is speaking the truth. It’s no wonder that most sexual assaults go unreported. The accuser will likely be doxxed, her name dragged through the mud, she will be labeled and disbelieved and, the added bonus now: Relentlessly bullied online for being a female who has accused a man of doing what terrible men have done throughout history.

Like all women, I have had my fair share of terrible, unwanted sexual and sexist encounters. There was the government boss who had a one on one meeting with me to discuss “the future direction of my project”. The project was classified so he asked me to close the door. When I closed and turned around, he was standing right there, and tried to corner me and kiss me. I was able to dodge him and leave the room. YES, that really happened. This was a charismatic man who was liked and didn’t seem sexist. He was married. I didn’t report it, because historically at the agency I worked at, reports of harassment were statistically overwhelmingly likely to end in the accuser being fired, the accused having no repercussions, and the accused’s name would be drug through the mud. I had bills to pay, so I just made sure to never be in a room alone with him again.

There was the team lead who intentionally wanted me to spend days doing high-powered radio frequency testing when I was pregnant. This would involve being a few feet away from the sorts of radar and radio devices used on aircraft carriers for hours every day. I said no, it would be too dangerous and could hurt my baby. He got angry and shouted in my face about it. This is the same man who later tried multiple times to intimidate and corner me in rooms alone when he didn’t like that I stood up for myself. I went to HR (never do that, kids), and they sided with him. I ended up leaving the entire project, which I loved.

Once, when walking in Chicago in the evening in winter, a random nicely dressed man started talking to me while we walked down the street near one another. He was commenting on nice restaurants in the area, and since I lived the next block over I gave him some advice. I enjoy chatting with people, and was content to just chat while we were on the same path. While waiting for a light to cross the street, he told me, “You know in this light, you remind me of my daughter.” I smiled and said thank you.

And then he grabbed my shoulders and tried to open mouthed kiss me. I shoved him away and called him a pervert, and went home and cried.

A man tried to drag me behind construction barriers when I was walking to the library when I was 19. He just grabbed me without a word from nowhere. I fought and got away.

A man who owned a comic book and gaming shop I went to as a teenager asked me if I “Was into married men” at 18. He was in his mid-forties. I’d felt safe after playing games with friends in his shop for months, and was there by myself. I laughed at him, and he said, “I’m serious.” I said, “Absolutely not, no thank you.” And left.

Honestly, these are the most PG stories I have of deplorable behavior. I have others, but I don’t want to share them online. I commend the women who are brave enough to do so. And every single one of these stories has a man who I’m sure has plenty of people who would say, “Oh he would never! He’s a good man. A family man/upstanding citizen/good dude/goes to church/nice guy!” And the moment those “good men” got to be alone with a woman that they thought they could treat any way they wanted, they did. Or they tried their best to.

The thing about predators is, they don’t show who they are to everyone. They don’t walk around town with a lear on their face, with a smirk and greasy hair. They don’t come across as sociopaths. They have a mask that they show to us. There are so many decent and good men out there, and the predators don’t go up to those guys and say, “Bro, if I could get that girl behind a dumpster I’d rape her, amirite?” Brock Turner, one of the more infamous rapists, who literally raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster AND there were witnesses, got no jail sentence because the judge “didn’t want to ruin his life”. I’d argue that Brock Turner was the one who ruined his own life. But he appeared to be just a normal, preppy college student from a good family with a good future. They lurk among us, and know how to blend in and wait for the moment where they think they can get away with something. And they know the odds, and terrible to say, the world, are on their side a lot of the time.

We just elected a convicted sexual predator for President (again). As I write this, Pete Hegseth is being considered for SECDEF, despite convincing sexual assault allegations (and his own mother calling him a predator). At the moment, the public tide is turning in an anti-female wave on many levels. SCOTUS has stripped women of their body autonomy, and women have died from having miscarriages that they weren’t able to receive care for in places like Texas. Public perception and treatment of women is not at a great point. Mark Zuckerberg said he wanted “More masculine energy” at Meta last week, while Meta has a 2/3 male workforce. There’s a backlash currently in the public sphere against sexual equality. Part of that is because the more outrageous opinions get the attention, and our economy is in many ways attention-based these days. Part of it is because even the good men are tired of being painted with the “All men are bad” brush, which I think is a fair criticism. It’s absolutely true that not all men are bad; most of them are good, I do agree with that. But part of being the “good”, is making sure to call out and acknowledge the bad. And for so much of history, the “bad” have been able to act with impunity. I think maybe there was a bit of an overcompensation in recent years, where some people got so caught up in being able to finally acknowledge that they had a hammer of righteousness for the first time…and they unfortunately started to see all men as nails. We need to be careful to always recognize and support allies, and I’m not sure that it was kept in sight as much as it could have been. So now we have further tribalized again. The pendulum has swung a bit back the other way.

One of the hardest things to do is reconcile the people we think we know, with the other faces that those people don’t show us. We all do this to some degree, it’s part of living in society. I certainly don’t show the same aspect of my personality when doing a briefing at work, as I do to my children, or to my friends when discussing Star Wars or another hot button topic. But we need to remember that those masks can cover far more differences than interpretations of decorum, or what language is appropriate for current company. It can be a mask that covers horrors. And it’s our job to remember that you never truly know all parts of someone. At the same time, it’s important to remember that not ALL masks are covering monsters. Some of them are just covering regular human foibles, and that’s okay too. We need to remember that it’s not men vs women, right vs left, traditional vs progressive: It’s good vs evil. And the evil ones are the ones who hide their actions from the rest of us, because they know what they’re doing. And in this case, the mask that I’ve been following for years is one of my favorite authors. And now I have to reconcile the monster that he was hiding with what I thought I knew.

I won’t be purchasing anything else that gives money to Gaiman while he’s alive. I don’t want to support a living monster’s estate. I do still plan to watch Sandman and Good Omens when they come out, because those have an entire ecosystem of jobs that I want to support. However, I am not planning on getting rid of my books that he wrote either. I believe that artwork transcends the creator, and I don’t believe that the things I took away from his stories stopped existing because he’s not the person I thought he was. But I’m not going to continue to fund his means of exploitation either, and I won’t be recommending his work in the future. And I do support the women who came out against him, and I appreciate all the other authors and men and artists who have come out in support of the victims.

The world is hard and getting harder, for most of us. I don’t think that’s going to let up any time soon. But in the mean time, what we can do is remind ourselves that we are all here together. And in a world of polarization and hateful speech, which seeks to isolate and anger us for clicks and engagement (everyone types more when they’re mad! Everyone loves being told it’s not their fault, it’s the other guy’s!), let’s try to remember that most of us are here to try the best we can. Sometimes we fail, sometimes we succeed. But we need to listen to each other, even if the messages are hard. We need to find common ground, listen to the truth, and not surround ourselves with people just like ourselves. Men aren’t the problem; women aren’t the problem. Humans who wake up and choose evil are the problem, and the rest of us have to take uncomfortable steps to get ahead of them again. Maybe that means listening to someone who is saying a truth that hurts about someone you held in esteem. Maybe that means acknowledging that something about the world is not a good way to do things, even if it benefits you personally. And maybe that means acknowledging that simple answers may be attractive, but may not actually solve a complex problem in a country of 330 million, or a world of 8 billion. We just need to choose to move forward together, and make sure the company we keep is the “good” ones, as much as possible.

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