Relevant conversation from 2016

Oh good, so different from using Terrorists to justify the surveillance state.

Speaking of which the NSA Haiku Generator has been lifeboated!

Consul Leak Toxic
DDOS Agro Burst
Hazmat Ebola

Our surveillance goons are bored and lonely! Give them something to scan every day! 👋

This was the norm far longer than not. Only nobles rich enough to have washer servants would wear undergarments. The rest of us enjoyed brisk breezes betwixt our nethers.

I have multiple pairs of underwear but I hate h going to a laundromat, so I used to wait until I was absolutely out of everything and the clothes I was wearing were oversoiled.

I have laundry facilities at home now, but when I’m double-plus depressed, I still will wait until I have absolutely nothing to wear.

Wierd that God, the creator is a guy who looks like white Jesus. Jesus didn’t create the universe (nor did Adonai) even in the Christian Cinematic Universe. (Adonai was the god of Israel, and was promoted to custodian of the earth – the firmament.)

In the 20th century we developed an understanding of the scope of the universe (its breadth and rate of expansion) that renders silly (and pretentious) the notion God is a hominid ape, or male, or white. In fact everything other than the local group is out of our reach (assuming humans survive the imminent great filters and some epoch reach to other stars).

So even within this universe we are microbes on a speck of dust imagining we are central to God’s plan.

In the 1990s, we considered the possibilities that our universe may itself be caused by natural events, that ours is one bubble in a sea of foam, and any creator is multiple event horizons away, and we are as important to God as microbes beneath the earth’s crust (12+ miles down through solid rock) are to us.

The thing is, where Putin has oligarchs that would dump him in a hot second if he dropped a bomb, Trump is absolutely eager to blow shit up and doesn’t care / can’t process the consequences of dropping the first nuclear bomb in hostility^† and breaking the black ice.

In Trump’s first term no-one in the Department of Energy or the Department of Defense brass were MAGA loyalists, even though many considered themselves Republican, conservative and endorsed US military interventionism and adventurism. So when they were told (for instance) to nuke the snot out of North Korea to give them what for, Mattis was there to say no. None of the later secretaries of defense under Trump (Shanahan, Esper, Spencer, and Miller) would have authorized a nuclear strike either. And if one of them did, the generals under them were likely to resign than carry out such an order.

Enter Project 2025’s Schedule F plan, which is going to retire all the old brass US loyalists that are sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States (and mean it) and replace them with Trump loyalists, who, when asked to launch a nuclear strike against somewhere in the other side of the world will say Yes Sir! (or By Your Command ) or ( With Pleasure ) whatever the going evil-empire affirmative salute is.

So it is a likely possibility non-zero not-insignificant possibility President Donald J. Trump will order a nuclear strike during his second term, and it will be carried out by the department of defense. He still really wants to express his fire and fury and show the world his dick is absolutely the biggest.

I thought about this during Trump’s first term (and pondering the possibility of Hope, Montana getting nuked – three times! – at the end of Far Cry 5 ), imagining that unlike Greg Stillson in The Dead Zone bullying his principals to launch a first strike, Mattis would be there, steak-knife in hand to save the world from a rogue president. He actually did, just without the confrontation or the need of a steak-knife. But it means the Heritage Foundation is forewarned this time.

† Yes, technically two atomic bombs have been dropped in hostility, but after Castle Bravo / Bikini Atoll we quietly shifted from the atomic age to the nuclear age. It’s a significant difference. Hiroshima had about a 15KT yield (12-18KT estimated) while Bikini Atoll had a 15MT yield (that’s 1000x Hiroshima). US Peacekeeper missles carry ten MIRV 0.5MT warheads and bombs dropped from airplanes are 2.1MT. So yeah, we’ve had atomic war, but not nuclear war.

Hard Habit To Break by Chicago is pretty straightforward, but I liked it on the radio as a kid because it’s peppy and has an orchestra.

Decades later I get access to music service libraries and give it a listen.

I was a jerk and you left me, and now you’re with another guy. I’m not sorry. I’m not going to do better. But I have an orchestra!

I still like it, but have perspective now.

Because of course it did?

This was super-expected.

And match the red on the poster!

This was actually cultivated in the aughts. George W. Bush endorsed multiple secret units of Christian soldiers from the US Army and USMC to serve as Chosen do perform missions for God, which is why Spiritual Readiness was figured into the CSFF readiness assessment.

Spiritual readiness was about being a Christian Evangelical loyalist (that is the white Christian nationalist movement we’re facing today). Commanders were reassigned in the Obama era, and Spiritual Readiness was revised to become more inclusive (they’d still really rather you believe in some higher power), but the units of commandos for God are still around.

I dunno what happened during Trump or since, but since Flynn is still doing Flynn things, I assume they’re standing back and standing by.

I bet he’d have volunteers, and would feel better if he gave it an actual try.

But he appears too homophobic to kiss a pretty boy that loves him.

So inside Mr. O’Neill’s mind, he feels too femmy to be a Linux Catgirl, and while he hoped becoming a Navy SEAL and even shooting Osama Bin Laden for FBI and for the President of the United States would assure him of his manhood, he still feels his inner princess inside him growing like a kudzu and strangling out his masculinity.

And this is why he, again, a fucking Navy SEAL who has performed real operations for the United States, has to pick on civilians for who they voted for, even though defending that right IS HIS FUCKING JOB AND OATH.

O’Neill is an asshole and a bully, and I pity him for his gender dysmorphia, but there is help out there if he wants it.

The alternative to communism is drift towards monarchy.

< James Bond Opening Boilerplate Sting >

This smacks of the hyperloop, a false product offered to suppress support of other competing products.

Id est, a high-capital entity using their power to suppress competiton for smaller (more sincere) interests.

Obvously Facebook- and Zuckerberg-mocking AI content must continue until morale improves.

The original thought experiment had to do with playing around with infinity, which is a whole field of mathematics with a lot of crossover. It raises questions like whether we can assume any fixed-length sequence of digits can be found somewhere in the mantissa of a given irrational number (say, π).

In a company as blue-chip as Disney, the discontinuation of access and privileges and security clearance are indicators of imminent repositioning, likely firing if you’ve engaged in mischief (such as voicing your opinion or comparing salaries).

It’s why you give sweet Christmas presents to the awkward guy in HR and invite him to all your socials. Blow him if he’s into it. He’s your intel source regarding who is in danger of discharge, and if the boss doesn’t like you.

This disgruntled guy had to be lower rank than the mailroom if HR wasn’t given notice, and his access was super low priority. No-one cared.

(Yes, I’m bitter.)

So the secret to this thought experiment is to understand that infinite is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is…

The lifespan of the universe from big bang to heat death (the longest scenario) is a blink of an eye to eternity. The breadth and size of the universe – not just what we can see, but how big it is with all the inflation bits, even as its expanding faster than the speed of light – just a mote in a sunbeam compared to infinity.

Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity – distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. And thus we don’t imagine just how vast and literally impossible infinity is.

With an infinite number of monkeys, not only will you get one that will write out a Hamlet script perfectly the first time, formatted exactly as you need it, but you’ll have an infinite number of them. Yes, the percentage of the total will be very small (though not infinitesimally so), and even if you do a partial search you’re going to get a lot of false hits. But 0.000001% of ∞ is still ∞. ∞ / [Graham’s Number] = ∞

It’s a lot of monkeys.

Now, because the monkeys and typewriters and Shakespeare thought experiment isn’t super useful unless you’re dealing with angels and devils (they get to play with infinities. The real world is all normal numbers) the model has been paired down in Dawkin’s Weasel ( on Wikipedia ) and Weasel Programs which demonstrate how evolution (specifically biological evolution) isn’t random rather has random features, but natural selection is informed by, well, selection. Specifically survivability in a harsh environment. When slow rabbits fail to breed, the rabbits will mutate to be faster over generations.

Voting for Trump (or for any Republican candidate for elected office) is voting for one-party autocracy. Even if the individual is ethical, they will be pressured into serving the party (or removed for a more loyalist alternative). Not voting for a Democrat when there’s a Republican candidate is not voting against one party autocracy.

Trump is not Hitler. He’s the Secret Hitler of this election. Even if he’s less bright than Hitler and less charismatic than Hitler, he’s fulfilling the same role, and the outcome will be the same, a one-party autocracy propped up by fascist enemy-within rhetoric and a massive deportation effort that will ultimately turn into a massive evacuation effort. (That is, evacuation into mass graves, or even an ash pit).

We are on the precipice. Do not fuck around. Do not think otherwise. Do not let anyone else think otherwise. If Trump wins, the world is going to hold America’s beer while it works to enact a holocaust that dwarfs the Holocaust… unless the resistance is really good (it’s probably not) or the Allies overrun Washington (not in time).