An Inundation Of Information

… this blog contains links to stories about important current events, important concepts, and interesting information. It will also often include reactions to them by the editor of this blog. Many of the stories will be of global importance, but some will be of specific regional importance to Canadians.

[steelcaver]

I was never a huge fan of The Tragically Hip — their musical style was never the loud, abrasive one I prefer, and their lyrical references to small-town life don't exactly resonate with a book-wormy tech-head who lives in the shadow of a cosmopolitan metropolis.

That said, I have to acknowledge that they have artistic merit — "Grace, Too" with its references to human trafficking, "Locked In The Trunk Of A Car" with its references to humanity's long-standing willingness to kill, and "Nautical Disaster" with its references to humanity's apathy at the doomed, come to mind.

They might not be my favourite act, but it's still going to be sad to see the band sign off for good tonight at the end of their final concert — the whole world is poorer for the loss of competent artists.

I'm a little baffled that the best news article I've found on this quintessentially Canadian act's closing ceremony was published in an American newspaper.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/08/20/canadas-unofficial-poet-laureate-is-dying-hes-giving-one-last-concert-before-he-goes/

[steelcaver]

Remembering that Soviet troops helped win WWII — inflicting 80% of the casualties suffered by the Nazis, suffering 30 million dead in the process, and allowing the Western Allies to liberate Europe with half as many troops as they'd have needed otherwise.

Photo, by Yevgeny Khaldei, of a Soviet soldier raising the USSR's flag above the German Reichstag at the end of World War II. 

[steelcaver]

The so-called Secret Police Bill has passed both chambers of Parliament.  

     Opposition to Bill C-51 (Anti-terrorism Act, 2015) has been vocal and widespread:  a joint statement condemning the bill as a threat to human rights was signed by four former prime ministers, five former Supreme Court justices, seven former cabinet officials, three past members of the intelligence review committee, two former privacy commissioners and a retired RCMP watchdog; over a hundred business leaders have signed a similar statement; over a hundred law professors have signed their names on written condemnations of the bill; and a popular campaign by OpenMedia.ca has collected over two-hundred-thousand signatures from ordinary Canadians demanding that the bill not pass.       The obvious criticisms of the bill from legal experts are that the legal powers it grants law-enforcement to conduct espionage against Canadians are too broad in some cases, already exist in other cases, and are likely to be abused by law-enforcement.       From a security perspective, spying isn't going to do any good against the kind of "stray dog" attacks most likely to occur in Canada.  Monitoring the cell phone of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, who killed a ceremonial guard in Ottawa, wouldn't have done much good since he planned his attack alone, and investigations of his past revealed that he was emotionally-disturbed crack-abuser who should have been institutionalised for addiction issues; Martin Couture-Rouleau, known for impulsively running over two Canadian soldiers with a vehicle, similarly acted alone and was already known to his neighbours as someone who needed psychiatric assistance.       The Harpies require the signature of the Governor General of Canada to put it into force, but unfortunately, that isn't much of a hurdle:  the office of Governor General of Canada has proven to be little more than a lap-dog for governments in the past, as previous governor generals didn't stand up to poor decisions by past governments; and the current Governor General was hand-picked by the Harpies, making it unlikely that he's the type to disagree with them.       There is a petition online calling for all of the party leaders to commit to scrapping the new law — found online at https://killc51.ca/ — but that petition isn't likely to have much effect on the leaders of the three major parties:  Justin Trudeau, leader of the third party in Parliament, has supported the bill since it was introduced; Stephen Harper was the one who introduced the bill in the first place; and Thomas Mulcair, leader of the New Democratic Party Of Canada, has already openly stated his party's intention to repeal the Secret Police Bill should they win government in the next federal election.       Since the only concrete opposition to the bill from any of Canada's major political parties at the federal level has been from the New Democratic Party Of Canada, Canadians who wish to see their security and rights protected would be well-advised to begin working with the federal NDP.       We’ve all been complacent for too long.  It’s time for all of us to get active in order to defend the Canada we were promised.

[steelcaver]

Elizabeth Plank writes “If You Care About Women, Delete Your Uber Account“ in a scathing piece written for Mic. With Uber attempting to set up shop in Toronto, it’d be helpful for Torontonians to familiarise themselves with Uber’s track record of shady behaviour and misdeeds. 

[steelcaver]

     A representative of the local Male Regressives' Association tried to criticise my spelling in this post … after missing the second o in the word oppression, after forgetting to capitalise the second sentence of his post, after butchering the grammar of his reply, and apparently without consulting a dictionary (the correct spelling is in fact "honour" according to The Oxford English Dictionary, whose staff are based in England, which is where the English language was invented).         MRAs crack me up X-D     

[tastefullyoffensive]

"Helping the princess" by Port Sherry

[wouldyousingalong]

atmidnightcc - January 14th, 2015 - Free the Nipple

[npr]

Carl Krawitt has watched his son, Rhett, now 6, fight leukemia for the past 4 1/2 years. For more than three of those years, Rhett has undergone round after round of chemotherapy. Last year he finished chemotherapy, and doctors say he is in remission.

Now, there’s a new threat, one that the family should not have to worry about: measles.

Rhett cannot be vaccinated, because his immune system is still rebuilding. It may be months more before his body is healthy enough to get all his immunizations. Until then, he depends on everyone around him for protection — what’s known as herd immunity.

But Rhett lives in Marin County, Calif., a county with the dubious honor of having the highest rate of “personal belief exemptions” in the Bay Area and among the highest in the state. This school year, 6.45 percent of children in Marin have a personal belief exemption, which allows parents to lawfully send their children to school unvaccinated against communicable diseases like measles, polio, whooping cough and more.

Carl Krawitt has had just about enough. “It’s very emotional for me,” he said. “If you choose not to immunize your own child and your own child dies because they get measles, OK, that’s your responsibility, that’s your choice. But if your child gets sick and gets my child sick and my child dies, then … your action has harmed my child.”

To Protect His Son, A Father Asks School To Bar Unvaccinated Children

Photo Credit: Carl Krawitt

[wilwheaton]

Great job, anti-vaxxers! Your idiocy has put this little boy’s life at risk, because you chose bullshit over science. I hope you’re proud of yourselves.

[wilwheaton]

As someone who has been losing so much faith in the gaming community & has felt so unwanted & exhausted by the ongoing GamerGate stuff, I want to thank you. It means so much -I can't express it- to see someone with your clout speaking out against it.

Don’t lose faith in the gaming community, because those little pieces of shit are tiny parts of it who don’t matter at all

[socialistmodernism]

Administrative Palace, Satu Mare, Romania, built between 1972-84, Architects Nicolae Porumbescu, Ludovic Gyüre

[sapphire1707]

Milky Way as seen though Turret Arch by derliebewolf on Flickr.

[kindexposure]

© | Kxndrick

[steelcaver]

A Thought About Chivalry, Feminism, and Freedom

     Chivalry provides the best example of a form of oppression one could ask for.

     Chivalry: it dictated that men always had to make the effort to be kind to people other than themselves, even when those people didn't deserve kindness, and thus posed as noble when it was in fact restrictive; it dictated that men must be the breadwinner for a single woman in order to maintain their honour, and thus forced men into a well-disguised form of servitude; it dictated that chivalrous men punish those who acted unchivalrously, which prevented rational men from acting outside of chivalry without fearing for their lives; it dictated that men must honour their masters even when their masters were dishonourable or un-chivalrous.

     As a form of oppression, chivalry was damned near perfect — subtle, insidious, self-perpetuating, and reinforced those in power.

     Feminism has come along and exposed chivalry (even the watered-down modern version) for what it was, thus liberating men from its clutches. 

     And yet, some males see feminism as some sort of existential threat.

     The fact that some boys haven't been able to shake off the shackles of chivalry proves Voltaire's old quip.

"It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." ~ François-Marie "Voltaire" Arouet

[ginge-r]

mother. friggin’. space. man. x

[mutedoggy-deactivated20221114]

Just look at this and try to tell me we’re alone in the universe.

[thedemoncloset]

Will reblog every time.

[wilwheaton]

So I’ve been reading about cults for a thing (although cults, as we think of them, and not just harmless hippie communes, are an expression of what’s called a totalist belief system) and I’m reasonably sure the Stupidsphere fits the behaviours, which is worrying because one of the behaviours is ‘stop seeing people who don’t agree with us as people’.   One of the key pieces is having a “milieu” that can be controlled. Fox News and their ilk encourage their watchers not to get information from outsiders, and the American cultural tendency to let people be so long as they’re not hurting anyone keeps outsiders out.   That’s when you start the talk about how it’s imperative that they participate, because they’ll save America from the enemy (defined as: anyone who disagrees with them). They start redefining the world to conform to their ideology (that of outsiders who are simultaneously dangerously effective and incompetent fools). They invite people to share in that ideology, and thereby become heroes fighting the forces of darkness, who are everywhere! Without ever having to leave the couch other than the moments where they blindly vote Republican.   A lot of the techniques that we make fun of Fox News for – their brazen willingness to blend fact and fiction, their use of ‘liberal’ as an epithet, their insistence on impossible standards of ethics – are all techniques to maintain control over their viewership, who are seeing a country their identity is wrapped up in perpetually sliding into the abyss. They’re made vulnerable by their powerlessness, by the Stupidsphere convincing them of their powerlessness.   Fox News is willing to stop here, because all they want is a captive audience, but there’s one further step: when individual experience is superseded by doctrine, you start to encourage erasure of the self, and at that point control is complete. The idea of people, with all their needs and flaws, starts to fall away, replaced by the doctrine, and defending it from outsiders who wish to kill the idea. They are not real; they are flawed, broken, otherwise they would see the perfect truth of the doctrine for themselves. They can not be convinced. They can only be marginalised or destroyed.   Most exit counselling (they don’t do deprogramming any more) starts with teaching the client about methods of control. It’s the same principle as mindfulness – if you can name what’s going on, it’s easier to rise above it.

By reader Merus, on my post “That Time The Stupidsphere Showed Up”. (via wilwheaton)

[etherealvistas]

Clear sky over Tromsø (Norway) by John A.Hemmingsen || Prints

[mydarkenedeyes]

Roman Noven & Tania Shcheglova | On Tumblr.