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318 results for “furtive”
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#TimeTravelingGhost EP 10: Post 96: 1191, Nicosia, Cyprus
**#Wss366 Shining #TimeTravelAuthors 04/29. Author's choice/promo
“Come,” said the hooded figure, beckoning toward the rear of the tavern. “They love not sorcerers here. Nor foreigners, as your clothes mark you.”
I followed him closely across the crowded floor, flanked by two guards. The murmur of complaint that continued wasn’t reassuring, but the crowd parted for our guide as if he were Moses at the Red Sea. As we reached an exit, he turned and addressed the room. While I didn’t understand the words, they silenced the complaints.
Beyond the door, we emerged into a dusty alley stinking of refuse or worse. Overhead, the sun blazed down, #shining hot enough to fry one’s brains. I wished I could change my clothes to the coarse linen tunics worn by my guards, but it seemed unwise to resort to “sorcery.” It was a balance between looking outlandish or confirming I was a sorceress. I made the obvious choice not to make things worse.
“We should hurry,” our host said in French. “The Franks will know of your arrival soon. They govern with Satan’s iron fist.”
I translated for Emily, who nodded and kept pace with us.
We threaded our way through twisted alleys, drawing suspicious stares and the occasional sign against the evil eye. The people we passed were of a swarthy cast, wearing loose robes, tunics, and turbans. They spoke a multitude of languages, none of which I understood.
There was a sense of tension and distrust beyond what our mere presence could explain. There were furtive glances up and down the street and hushed voices instead of gossip.
“Do you think we're in Nicosia?” Emily asked me.
“Are we in Nicosia?” I, in turn, asked our guide.
“Nicosia, 907 Anno Martyrum or 1191 by your calendar.”
“Yes,” I said to Emily. “And I think he knows we're time-travelers. Why else would he tell me the year?”
Emily nodded again, while my guards gave me an evil glare. The youth soon explained, “It is best not to speak the language of the invaders. Al-Malik Rīchārd is not well-loved.”
As he finished speaking, shouts and the sound of running feet broke the uneasy murmur of the street. Soon after, men ran past us in disorganized ones, twos, and threes. Cries of “Hoi Naítai,” “Hoi Phrángoi,” “Al-Faranj,” and “Fursān al-Haykal” filled the air.
My guards drew their daggers, and we turned to retreat, only to be met by the crowd surging back, milling about like trapped sheep.
“Alas!” our guide cried. "The Franks! We've been betrayed!"
#TootFic #MicroFiction #NMFic #TimeTravel #HistoricalFantasy #UrbanFantasy #Mythpunk #Serial #Slowburn #Yuri
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No, not him, the dessert.
"While executing a flawless Baked Alaska is still an impressive feat today, back when it was initially created, it would have been even more noteworthy. There were no electric ice cream machines, stand mixers to whip up flawless meringue, or blowtorches to effortlessly toast the exterior. It was a time-consuming treat that required many hands on deck to create all the components. While you can combine any flavors of ice cream and cake to create a Baked Alaska, the original version featured bananas, which were considered quite expensive and exotic at the time, as they had to be imported from Central America.
To reflect the effort and exotic ingredients required for the dessert, the original Delmonico's price tag would have been the equivalent of about $40 today. Though you can try it for about $24 now, you'll still get the same flavor experience as a diner in the Gilded Age, as the restaurant still uses the same classic flavor combination of walnut cake, apricot jam and banana gelato.
The dessert menu of many restaurants nowadays is a lot simpler, and the idea of a dessert that requires such precise timing and such a theatrical tableside presentation has fallen out of favor. However, it remains a unique sweet offering. While you're searching for it on a menu near you, we have the recipe for a mint version so you can whip one up at home."
https://www.mashed.com/1915735/once-popular-70s-cake-baked-alaska-people-dont-eat-today/
"Like sex trafficking panic more broadly, the Epstein files are a useful political tool—as long as they remain hidden.
Remember QAnon? The conspiracy theory, popular among President Donald Trump's supporters for years, held that a furtive network of satanic pedophiles had infiltrated political institutions, the press, and other echelons of power and influence. According to Q lore, Trump was working to expose and punish these cretins—who included Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats—and to end the child suffering, sex trafficking, and hormone harvesting that these horrible globalists were engaging in.
QAnon—itself preceded by the perhaps even more zany Pizzagate conspiracy—was too out there for mainstream Republicans to explicitly endorse. But neither would they explicitly condemn the theory or its believers, and they often seemed happy to play along with the narrative, touting Trump's alleged crackdown on child sex trafficking.
Republicans took a lot of flak for this, but of course, Democrats had been stoking sex trafficking panic for their own gain, too. QAnon didn't start in a vacuum; it followed two decades of mainstream media and politicians, both left and right, using the flimsiest evidence and most distorted data to falsely claim that America was in the midst of a sex trafficking epidemic."
https://reason.com/2025/07/16/magas-epstein-files-fight-shows-the-long-tail-of-qanon/
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The 21 Day Boyfriend Audiobook
The 21-Day Boyfriend
A.S. Kelly
Publication date: May 21 2025 (Audiobook)
Genres: Adult, Comedy, Contemporary, LGBTQ+, RomanceEric O’Shea needs to make a decision. The annual event his family forces him to attend is just around the corner, and he doesn’t have a date.
Eric never needs help when it comes to finding men. But this time is different – his ex and his new boyfriend will be there, and Eric can’t just bring along one of his usual flings.
His only hope seems to be him: the best friend of his best friend, who he never wanted to meet.
Sean Quinn is a calm, collected, and cultured man; someone who would rather stay at home and read a book than waste his time chasing a date with no future.
Sean isn’t in a rush to find the perfect man, and he certainly doesn’t intend to go out with Eric: his best friend’s other best friend, who he’s avoided meeting for years.
But Sean has a flaw: he can’t say no to anyone, especially not when it comes to his friend Jake, who has a habit of worming his way into other people’s lives.
But it’s just one date, after all: pure fiction. It’s a shame, then, that when Eric needs Sean for another favour, he can’t turn his back. It’s a shame that just when Sean is beginning to understand that Eric isn’t what he seems, he can’t seem to stop before he gets hurt.
Twenty-one days: that’s the agreement.
Twenty-one days of grazing hands, furtive glances, and unexpected kisses.
Twenty-one days where anything goes; except falling in love.Goodreads / Amazon / Audible / Apple / Kobo / Google Play
—
AUDIO TEASER:
Author Bio:
A. S. Kelly writes Rom-Com, Romantic Fiction and Family Saga.
Avid reader, hopeless romantic, lover of yoga, knitting and home baking.
She was born in Italy but lives in Ireland with her husband, two children and a cat named Oscar.Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / Bookbub / Newsletter
GIVEAWAY!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
https://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js -
The 21 Day Boyfriend Audiobook
The 21-Day Boyfriend
A.S. Kelly
Publication date: May 21 2025 (Audiobook)
Genres: Adult, Comedy, Contemporary, LGBTQ+, RomanceEric O’Shea needs to make a decision. The annual event his family forces him to attend is just around the corner, and he doesn’t have a date.
Eric never needs help when it comes to finding men. But this time is different – his ex and his new boyfriend will be there, and Eric can’t just bring along one of his usual flings.
His only hope seems to be him: the best friend of his best friend, who he never wanted to meet.
Sean Quinn is a calm, collected, and cultured man; someone who would rather stay at home and read a book than waste his time chasing a date with no future.
Sean isn’t in a rush to find the perfect man, and he certainly doesn’t intend to go out with Eric: his best friend’s other best friend, who he’s avoided meeting for years.
But Sean has a flaw: he can’t say no to anyone, especially not when it comes to his friend Jake, who has a habit of worming his way into other people’s lives.
But it’s just one date, after all: pure fiction. It’s a shame, then, that when Eric needs Sean for another favour, he can’t turn his back. It’s a shame that just when Sean is beginning to understand that Eric isn’t what he seems, he can’t seem to stop before he gets hurt.
Twenty-one days: that’s the agreement.
Twenty-one days of grazing hands, furtive glances, and unexpected kisses.
Twenty-one days where anything goes; except falling in love.Goodreads / Amazon / Audible / Apple / Kobo / Google Play
—
AUDIO TEASER:
Author Bio:
A. S. Kelly writes Rom-Com, Romantic Fiction and Family Saga.
Avid reader, hopeless romantic, lover of yoga, knitting and home baking.
She was born in Italy but lives in Ireland with her husband, two children and a cat named Oscar.Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / Bookbub / Newsletter
GIVEAWAY!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
https://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js -
The 21 Day Boyfriend Audiobook
The 21-Day Boyfriend
A.S. Kelly
Publication date: May 21 2025 (Audiobook)
Genres: Adult, Comedy, Contemporary, LGBTQ+, RomanceEric O’Shea needs to make a decision. The annual event his family forces him to attend is just around the corner, and he doesn’t have a date.
Eric never needs help when it comes to finding men. But this time is different – his ex and his new boyfriend will be there, and Eric can’t just bring along one of his usual flings.
His only hope seems to be him: the best friend of his best friend, who he never wanted to meet.
Sean Quinn is a calm, collected, and cultured man; someone who would rather stay at home and read a book than waste his time chasing a date with no future.
Sean isn’t in a rush to find the perfect man, and he certainly doesn’t intend to go out with Eric: his best friend’s other best friend, who he’s avoided meeting for years.
But Sean has a flaw: he can’t say no to anyone, especially not when it comes to his friend Jake, who has a habit of worming his way into other people’s lives.
But it’s just one date, after all: pure fiction. It’s a shame, then, that when Eric needs Sean for another favour, he can’t turn his back. It’s a shame that just when Sean is beginning to understand that Eric isn’t what he seems, he can’t seem to stop before he gets hurt.
Twenty-one days: that’s the agreement.
Twenty-one days of grazing hands, furtive glances, and unexpected kisses.
Twenty-one days where anything goes; except falling in love.Goodreads / Amazon / Audible / Apple / Kobo / Google Play
—
AUDIO TEASER:
Author Bio:
A. S. Kelly writes Rom-Com, Romantic Fiction and Family Saga.
Avid reader, hopeless romantic, lover of yoga, knitting and home baking.
She was born in Italy but lives in Ireland with her husband, two children and a cat named Oscar.Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / Bookbub / Newsletter
GIVEAWAY!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
https://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js -
The 21 Day Boyfriend Audiobook
The 21-Day Boyfriend
A.S. Kelly
Publication date: May 21 2025 (Audiobook)
Genres: Adult, Comedy, Contemporary, LGBTQ+, RomanceEric O’Shea needs to make a decision. The annual event his family forces him to attend is just around the corner, and he doesn’t have a date.
Eric never needs help when it comes to finding men. But this time is different – his ex and his new boyfriend will be there, and Eric can’t just bring along one of his usual flings.
His only hope seems to be him: the best friend of his best friend, who he never wanted to meet.
Sean Quinn is a calm, collected, and cultured man; someone who would rather stay at home and read a book than waste his time chasing a date with no future.
Sean isn’t in a rush to find the perfect man, and he certainly doesn’t intend to go out with Eric: his best friend’s other best friend, who he’s avoided meeting for years.
But Sean has a flaw: he can’t say no to anyone, especially not when it comes to his friend Jake, who has a habit of worming his way into other people’s lives.
But it’s just one date, after all: pure fiction. It’s a shame, then, that when Eric needs Sean for another favour, he can’t turn his back. It’s a shame that just when Sean is beginning to understand that Eric isn’t what he seems, he can’t seem to stop before he gets hurt.
Twenty-one days: that’s the agreement.
Twenty-one days of grazing hands, furtive glances, and unexpected kisses.
Twenty-one days where anything goes; except falling in love.Goodreads / Amazon / Audible / Apple / Kobo / Google Play
—
AUDIO TEASER:
Author Bio:
A. S. Kelly writes Rom-Com, Romantic Fiction and Family Saga.
Avid reader, hopeless romantic, lover of yoga, knitting and home baking.
She was born in Italy but lives in Ireland with her husband, two children and a cat named Oscar.Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / Bookbub / Newsletter
GIVEAWAY!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
https://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js -
The 21 Day Boyfriend Audiobook
The 21-Day Boyfriend
A.S. Kelly
Publication date: May 21 2025 (Audiobook)
Genres: Adult, Comedy, Contemporary, LGBTQ+, RomanceEric O’Shea needs to make a decision. The annual event his family forces him to attend is just around the corner, and he doesn’t have a date.
Eric never needs help when it comes to finding men. But this time is different – his ex and his new boyfriend will be there, and Eric can’t just bring along one of his usual flings.
His only hope seems to be him: the best friend of his best friend, who he never wanted to meet.
Sean Quinn is a calm, collected, and cultured man; someone who would rather stay at home and read a book than waste his time chasing a date with no future.
Sean isn’t in a rush to find the perfect man, and he certainly doesn’t intend to go out with Eric: his best friend’s other best friend, who he’s avoided meeting for years.
But Sean has a flaw: he can’t say no to anyone, especially not when it comes to his friend Jake, who has a habit of worming his way into other people’s lives.
But it’s just one date, after all: pure fiction. It’s a shame, then, that when Eric needs Sean for another favour, he can’t turn his back. It’s a shame that just when Sean is beginning to understand that Eric isn’t what he seems, he can’t seem to stop before he gets hurt.
Twenty-one days: that’s the agreement.
Twenty-one days of grazing hands, furtive glances, and unexpected kisses.
Twenty-one days where anything goes; except falling in love.Goodreads / Amazon / Audible / Apple / Kobo / Google Play
—
AUDIO TEASER:
Author Bio:
A. S. Kelly writes Rom-Com, Romantic Fiction and Family Saga.
Avid reader, hopeless romantic, lover of yoga, knitting and home baking.
She was born in Italy but lives in Ireland with her husband, two children and a cat named Oscar.Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / Bookbub / Newsletter
GIVEAWAY!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
https://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js -
#wss366 06/20 #TimeTravelAuthors
#FanFiction #TearmoonEmpireThe Norns
Chapter 1: The Rainy SeasonThe rain lashed Mai Tearmoon, soaking through the fluffy riding outfit Anne made her wear. Her horse, spooked by a thunderclap, disappeared around the edge of the forest ahead.
“To think a horse would betray me! What if the rebel army were chasing us?” Mai demanded of the wet grass. Not that any rebels were chasing her—this time. In her previous life, however, things had ended poorly: prison, a guillotine, one very final thud. Anne, her loyal maid, and Ludwig, that obnoxious Four-Eyes, were among her few good memories.
Determined not to repeat that unpleasant ending, she had resolved, among other things, to learn horseback riding. It was time well spent. She was a master of the jellyfish style. Hang tight, be with the horse’s rhythm, and let it make all the decisions. That counted as progress, didn’t it?
Yes, in this timeline, she had avoided the revolution, prepared for the famine, and headed off numerous plots by the Serpents. Still, she couldn’t forget those last moments, the squeal of the blade descending, the sharp sting, and the sight of people spinning as her head rolled by. No amount of time traveling or reality switching could cure the trauma of that moment.
After a furtive glance to confirm no rogue guillotines were giving chase, she rose, dusted herself off, and limped toward the sheltering trees.
“If only I had listened to Anne. She warned me it was the rainy #season,” Mai muttered. But it had been so sunny, and the clouds so far on the horizon. It had just been too good a day not to go riding.
Another thunderclap sounded, and Mai dashed under the trees. “Good thing Anne is not here. She would be so scared.” Mai’s voice shook slightly, but that must have been because of the fall. Simple thunder would never frighten the future ruler of Tearmoon! Yes, of course, it was Anne she was worried about, not herself. How silly to think otherwise.
Once under the trees, the princess gracefully shook off the water dripping from her clothes. No one would ever say she looked like a Saint Bernard shaking itself, not even an elegant papillon. Heaven forbid a shih tzu should come to mind.
The trees kept the worst of the rain off the princess, but her clothes were heavy with cold water. “I suppose they will come looking for me when I miss tea.” The thought cheered her, but also reminded her she was hungry.
“Good thing I've been studying foraging,” she thought. If occasionally asking friends about the edibility of plants on walks counted as studying, she had done plenty of it. Usually, the answer was that they had no idea. Why would young nobles know such things? They also inevitably hustled Mai away before she ate it, especially if the plant in question was a mushroom.
“There is no help for it,” she thought and began looking for likely nuts, berries, or fungus.
#microfiction #NMPrompts #NMV366 #Anime #Manga #LightNovel #Fantasy #JNovelClub
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Where the voice of justice weeps in silent despair (Post 2/2)
While the protests by junior doctors received excellent response from the citizens of West Bengal, rest of India India, what caught ny eager attention was the movement that got initiated after Rimjhim Sinha’s call for “Reclaim the Night” on social media. Her Facebook post, on 10th August 2024, inviting people to join her near a bus stand in Jadavpur, attracted a larger-than-expected crowd. The protests transcended local boundaries, with thousands of women and common citizens taking to the streets across West Bengal, demanding justice for the raped and murdered junior doctor. It also spread in other Indian states and even in the USA. A large number of the participants included first time protestors and senior citizens. The “Reclaim the Night” campaign, which happened twice during August and September 2024, was described by Rimjhim Sinha as a new freedom struggle for women, symbolized by a viral poster of a red hand holding a crescent moon. This imagery conveyed a sense of defiance and reclaiming public spaces, traditionally perceived as unsafe for women. In a Facebook post (on 4th October 2024) she, while always supporting the movement and protests of the Junior Doctors, re-emphasized the following priorities for state level reforms.
1. Punishment shall be ensured to all the culprits involved in the rape and murder incident at RG Kar Medical College, Kolkata.
2. All workplaces, including medical centres, require secure rest rooms and crèches for women.
3. Public transport shall be made available in Kolkata and capital cities at night.
4. School curricula should include gender-equality education, sexuality education and legal education.
5. Victim blaming shall be brought under the law.
6. Impartial and transparent Internal Complaint Committee or Local Complaint Committee shall exist in all workplaces and related areas.
7. All work related areas shall have toilets for women and people of marginalized gender-sexuality.
8. Shelter and alternative income shall be arranged at the district level for women victims of domestic violence.
The above mentioned issues are all applicable to every state of India. Though these movements attracted massive mindshare and fervour, I am not sure how much it helped to meet expectations. I also failed to understand whether the process of investigation and delivering justice actually got accelerated to a desirable extent. The movement obviously did not spread in other states of India at a larger scale. As on today, we are still awaiting justice for the doctor whose death again shook our conscience. Was there enough reporting by media in English and regional languages except Bengali? The next steps of the movements are not yet clear.
I borrow words from William Radice’s English translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s poem "Prosno" (Question) to conclude my post.And meanwhile I see secretive hatred murdering the helpless
[Post 2/2]
Under cover of night;
And Justice weeping silently and furtively at power misused
No hope of redress.
#Humanity #Human #RGKar #WomenSafety #WeWantJustice #ViolenceAgainstWomen #MastodonIndians #MastIndia #India -
Where the voice of justice weeps in silent despair (Post 2/2)
While the protests by junior doctors received excellent response from the citizens of West Bengal, rest of India India, what caught ny eager attention was the movement that got initiated after Rimjhim Sinha’s call for “Reclaim the Night” on social media. Her Facebook post, on 10th August 2024, inviting people to join her near a bus stand in Jadavpur, attracted a larger-than-expected crowd. The protests transcended local boundaries, with thousands of women and common citizens taking to the streets across West Bengal, demanding justice for the raped and murdered junior doctor. It also spread in other Indian states and even in the USA. A large number of the participants included first time protestors and senior citizens. The “Reclaim the Night” campaign, which happened twice during August and September 2024, was described by Rimjhim Sinha as a new freedom struggle for women, symbolized by a viral poster of a red hand holding a crescent moon. This imagery conveyed a sense of defiance and reclaiming public spaces, traditionally perceived as unsafe for women. In a Facebook post (on 4th October 2024) she, while always supporting the movement and protests of the Junior Doctors, re-emphasized the following priorities for state level reforms.
1. Punishment shall be ensured to all the culprits involved in the rape and murder incident at RG Kar Medical College, Kolkata.
2. All workplaces, including medical centres, require secure rest rooms and crèches for women.
3. Public transport shall be made available in Kolkata and capital cities at night.
4. School curricula should include gender-equality education, sexuality education and legal education.
5. Victim blaming shall be brought under the law.
6. Impartial and transparent Internal Complaint Committee or Local Complaint Committee shall exist in all workplaces and related areas.
7. All work related areas shall have toilets for women and people of marginalized gender-sexuality.
8. Shelter and alternative income shall be arranged at the district level for women victims of domestic violence.
The above mentioned issues are all applicable to every state of India. Though these movements attracted massive mindshare and fervour, I am not sure how much it helped to meet expectations. I also failed to understand whether the process of investigation and delivering justice actually got accelerated to a desirable extent. The movement obviously did not spread in other states of India at a larger scale. As on today, we are still awaiting justice for the doctor whose death again shook our conscience. Was there enough reporting by media in English and regional languages except Bengali? The next steps of the movements are not yet clear.
I borrow words from William Radice’s English translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s poem "Prosno" (Question) to conclude my post.And meanwhile I see secretive hatred murdering the helpless
[Post 2/2]
Under cover of night;
And Justice weeping silently and furtively at power misused
No hope of redress.
#Humanity #Human #RGKar #WomenSafety #WeWantJustice #ViolenceAgainstWomen #MastodonIndians #MastIndia #India -
Where the voice of justice weeps in silent despair (Post 2/2)
While the protests by junior doctors received excellent response from the citizens of West Bengal, rest of India India, what caught ny eager attention was the movement that got initiated after Rimjhim Sinha’s call for “Reclaim the Night” on social media. Her Facebook post, on 10th August 2024, inviting people to join her near a bus stand in Jadavpur, attracted a larger-than-expected crowd. The protests transcended local boundaries, with thousands of women and common citizens taking to the streets across West Bengal, demanding justice for the raped and murdered junior doctor. It also spread in other Indian states and even in the USA. A large number of the participants included first time protestors and senior citizens. The “Reclaim the Night” campaign, which happened twice during August and September 2024, was described by Rimjhim Sinha as a new freedom struggle for women, symbolized by a viral poster of a red hand holding a crescent moon. This imagery conveyed a sense of defiance and reclaiming public spaces, traditionally perceived as unsafe for women. In a Facebook post (on 4th October 2024) she, while always supporting the movement and protests of the Junior Doctors, re-emphasized the following priorities for state level reforms.
1. Punishment shall be ensured to all the culprits involved in the rape and murder incident at RG Kar Medical College, Kolkata.
2. All workplaces, including medical centres, require secure rest rooms and crèches for women.
3. Public transport shall be made available in Kolkata and capital cities at night.
4. School curricula should include gender-equality education, sexuality education and legal education.
5. Victim blaming shall be brought under the law.
6. Impartial and transparent Internal Complaint Committee or Local Complaint Committee shall exist in all workplaces and related areas.
7. All work related areas shall have toilets for women and people of marginalized gender-sexuality.
8. Shelter and alternative income shall be arranged at the district level for women victims of domestic violence.
The above mentioned issues are all applicable to every state of India. Though these movements attracted massive mindshare and fervour, I am not sure how much it helped to meet expectations. I also failed to understand whether the process of investigation and delivering justice actually got accelerated to a desirable extent. The movement obviously did not spread in other states of India at a larger scale. As on today, we are still awaiting justice for the doctor whose death again shook our conscience. Was there enough reporting by media in English and regional languages except Bengali? The next steps of the movements are not yet clear.
I borrow words from William Radice’s English translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s poem "Prosno" (Question) to conclude my post.And meanwhile I see secretive hatred murdering the helpless
[Post 2/2]
Under cover of night;
And Justice weeping silently and furtively at power misused
No hope of redress.
#Humanity #Human #RGKar #WomenSafety #WeWantJustice #ViolenceAgainstWomen #MastodonIndians #MastIndia #India -
Where the voice of justice weeps in silent despair (Post 2/2)
While the protests by junior doctors received excellent response from the citizens of West Bengal, rest of India India, what caught ny eager attention was the movement that got initiated after Rimjhim Sinha’s call for “Reclaim the Night” on social media. Her Facebook post, on 10th August 2024, inviting people to join her near a bus stand in Jadavpur, attracted a larger-than-expected crowd. The protests transcended local boundaries, with thousands of women and common citizens taking to the streets across West Bengal, demanding justice for the raped and murdered junior doctor. It also spread in other Indian states and even in the USA. A large number of the participants included first time protestors and senior citizens. The “Reclaim the Night” campaign, which happened twice during August and September 2024, was described by Rimjhim Sinha as a new freedom struggle for women, symbolized by a viral poster of a red hand holding a crescent moon. This imagery conveyed a sense of defiance and reclaiming public spaces, traditionally perceived as unsafe for women. In a Facebook post (on 4th October 2024) she, while always supporting the movement and protests of the Junior Doctors, re-emphasized the following priorities for state level reforms.
1. Punishment shall be ensured to all the culprits involved in the rape and murder incident at RG Kar Medical College, Kolkata.
2. All workplaces, including medical centres, require secure rest rooms and crèches for women.
3. Public transport shall be made available in Kolkata and capital cities at night.
4. School curricula should include gender-equality education, sexuality education and legal education.
5. Victim blaming shall be brought under the law.
6. Impartial and transparent Internal Complaint Committee or Local Complaint Committee shall exist in all workplaces and related areas.
7. All work related areas shall have toilets for women and people of marginalized gender-sexuality.
8. Shelter and alternative income shall be arranged at the district level for women victims of domestic violence.
The above mentioned issues are all applicable to every state of India. Though these movements attracted massive mindshare and fervour, I am not sure how much it helped to meet expectations. I also failed to understand whether the process of investigation and delivering justice actually got accelerated to a desirable extent. The movement obviously did not spread in other states of India at a larger scale. As on today, we are still awaiting justice for the doctor whose death again shook our conscience. Was there enough reporting by media in English and regional languages except Bengali? The next steps of the movements are not yet clear.
I borrow words from William Radice’s English translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s poem "Prosno" (Question) to conclude my post.And meanwhile I see secretive hatred murdering the helpless
[Post 2/2]
Under cover of night;
And Justice weeping silently and furtively at power misused
No hope of redress.
#Humanity #Human #RGKar #WomenSafety #WeWantJustice #ViolenceAgainstWomen #MastodonIndians #MastIndia #India -
CW: Every Clock Is a Handgun in My Autistic Time: Adult language, intense images
Hey! Back after 7 months of the "shys." Missed y'all!
Perfect chance to talk Autistic Time:
Every clock is a handgun pointed at my head
Every tick, tick… fucking tick
Tolling Fear, Doom… dread
Click. Slide. Cock… click.Time doesn't flow smoothly for me. It's more like waves and troughs.
If I'm interested in what you're saying, what I'm reading… hours fly by. In fact, if I'm really into my passion… painting, cooking, whatev… time has no meaning.
I'm outside of time. In a place indistinguishable from… Joy.
Boredom?
A slow, annoying hands-and-knees crawl
across wooden schoolroom floor boards…
taking secret, furtive over-the-shoulder glances
at a second hand stubbornly sweeping.So, depression, anxiety… DEADLINES? They grind out, second by agonizing second, in my gut.
My very definition of… Dread.
Now, shoehorn my autistic experience into your punchclock world.
I'm #autistic. Pretty sure #ADHD, too.
How does this affect daily life?
Listen or read here:In my 70s, every ticking second is a countdown to some duty, obligation, deadline... death…
No. That's a lie.
Reality? Hours of numbness... obsessively flicking through screens... frightened to look away and notice the time of day... the season.
Leading to days of dull semi-awareness... punctuated by trips to the bathroom. Between delivered pizzas.
And moments of terror when despite my best dim-witted efforts, I see 9:27 out of the corner of my eye.
And the sun screams, 'Hey, it's morning. You gotta get going. You got stuff to do.'
Or maybe it's 3:19 am. So the moon shames me with, 'Well, there goes another day you didn't meet expectations.'
Every timepiece I can remember was like a prison guard's gun...
...The real power enforcing order.
The calendar that told the doctor that 2 weeks late is too long... so he forced my delivery with forceps.
Or the school bell that announced precisely when I must be silent... or pee.
#MentalHealth #Psychology #neurotwitter
The alarms shrieking at the factory door. Time clocks measuring the distance to starvation. Calendars counting days til the next vacation, back to school, parental promotion... and move to a new town.
Podcast: Every Clock is a Handgun in My Autistic Time
THEY measure my time by widgets per hour. ME? Joy per minute...👉 https://johnnyprofaneknapp.substack.com/p/podcast-every-clock-is-a-handgun-2ee
If you enjoyed this thread, please consider a free subscription to my subStack to get all new releases.
And, please like and share? Your repost may be the only way #neurodivergent voices can break through the algorithm.
-
CW: Every Clock Is a Handgun in My Autistic Time: Adult language, intense images
Hey! Back after 7 months of the "shys." Missed y'all!
Perfect chance to talk Autistic Time:
Every clock is a handgun pointed at my head
Every tick, tick… fucking tick
Tolling Fear, Doom… dread
Click. Slide. Cock… click.Time doesn't flow smoothly for me. It's more like waves and troughs.
If I'm interested in what you're saying, what I'm reading… hours fly by. In fact, if I'm really into my passion… painting, cooking, whatev… time has no meaning.
I'm outside of time. In a place indistinguishable from… Joy.
Boredom?
A slow, annoying hands-and-knees crawl
across wooden schoolroom floor boards…
taking secret, furtive over-the-shoulder glances
at a second hand stubbornly sweeping.So, depression, anxiety… DEADLINES? They grind out, second by agonizing second, in my gut.
My very definition of… Dread.
Now, shoehorn my autistic experience into your punchclock world.
I'm #autistic. Pretty sure #ADHD, too.
How does this affect daily life?
Listen or read here:In my 70s, every ticking second is a countdown to some duty, obligation, deadline... death…
No. That's a lie.
Reality? Hours of numbness... obsessively flicking through screens... frightened to look away and notice the time of day... the season.
Leading to days of dull semi-awareness... punctuated by trips to the bathroom. Between delivered pizzas.
And moments of terror when despite my best dim-witted efforts, I see 9:27 out of the corner of my eye.
And the sun screams, 'Hey, it's morning. You gotta get going. You got stuff to do.'
Or maybe it's 3:19 am. So the moon shames me with, 'Well, there goes another day you didn't meet expectations.'
Every timepiece I can remember was like a prison guard's gun...
...The real power enforcing order.
The calendar that told the doctor that 2 weeks late is too long... so he forced my delivery with forceps.
Or the school bell that announced precisely when I must be silent... or pee.
#MentalHealth #Psychology #neurotwitter
The alarms shrieking at the factory door. Time clocks measuring the distance to starvation. Calendars counting days til the next vacation, back to school, parental promotion... and move to a new town.
Podcast: Every Clock is a Handgun in My Autistic Time
THEY measure my time by widgets per hour. ME? Joy per minute...👉 https://johnnyprofaneknapp.substack.com/p/podcast-every-clock-is-a-handgun-2ee
If you enjoyed this thread, please consider a free subscription to my subStack to get all new releases.
And, please like and share? Your repost may be the only way #neurodivergent voices can break through the algorithm.
-
CW: Every Clock Is a Handgun in My Autistic Time: Adult language, intense images
Hey! Back after 7 months of the "shys." Missed y'all!
Perfect chance to talk Autistic Time:
Every clock is a handgun pointed at my head
Every tick, tick… fucking tick
Tolling Fear, Doom… dread
Click. Slide. Cock… click.Time doesn't flow smoothly for me. It's more like waves and troughs.
If I'm interested in what you're saying, what I'm reading… hours fly by. In fact, if I'm really into my passion… painting, cooking, whatev… time has no meaning.
I'm outside of time. In a place indistinguishable from… Joy.
Boredom?
A slow, annoying hands-and-knees crawl
across wooden schoolroom floor boards…
taking secret, furtive over-the-shoulder glances
at a second hand stubbornly sweeping.So, depression, anxiety… DEADLINES? They grind out, second by agonizing second, in my gut.
My very definition of… Dread.
Now, shoehorn my autistic experience into your punchclock world.
I'm #autistic. Pretty sure #ADHD, too.
How does this affect daily life?
Listen or read here:In my 70s, every ticking second is a countdown to some duty, obligation, deadline... death…
No. That's a lie.
Reality? Hours of numbness... obsessively flicking through screens... frightened to look away and notice the time of day... the season.
Leading to days of dull semi-awareness... punctuated by trips to the bathroom. Between delivered pizzas.
And moments of terror when despite my best dim-witted efforts, I see 9:27 out of the corner of my eye.
And the sun screams, 'Hey, it's morning. You gotta get going. You got stuff to do.'
Or maybe it's 3:19 am. So the moon shames me with, 'Well, there goes another day you didn't meet expectations.'
Every timepiece I can remember was like a prison guard's gun...
...The real power enforcing order.
The calendar that told the doctor that 2 weeks late is too long... so he forced my delivery with forceps.
Or the school bell that announced precisely when I must be silent... or pee.
#MentalHealth #Psychology #neurotwitter
The alarms shrieking at the factory door. Time clocks measuring the distance to starvation. Calendars counting days til the next vacation, back to school, parental promotion... and move to a new town.
Podcast: Every Clock is a Handgun in My Autistic Time
THEY measure my time by widgets per hour. ME? Joy per minute...👉 https://johnnyprofaneknapp.substack.com/p/podcast-every-clock-is-a-handgun-2ee
If you enjoyed this thread, please consider a free subscription to my subStack to get all new releases.
And, please like and share? Your repost may be the only way #neurodivergent voices can break through the algorithm.
-
CW: Every Clock Is a Handgun in My Autistic Time: Adult language, intense images
Hey! Back after 7 months of the "shys." Missed y'all!
Perfect chance to talk Autistic Time:
Every clock is a handgun pointed at my head
Every tick, tick… fucking tick
Tolling Fear, Doom… dread
Click. Slide. Cock… click.Time doesn't flow smoothly for me. It's more like waves and troughs.
If I'm interested in what you're saying, what I'm reading… hours fly by. In fact, if I'm really into my passion… painting, cooking, whatev… time has no meaning.
I'm outside of time. In a place indistinguishable from… Joy.
Boredom?
A slow, annoying hands-and-knees crawl
across wooden schoolroom floor boards…
taking secret, furtive over-the-shoulder glances
at a second hand stubbornly sweeping.So, depression, anxiety… DEADLINES? They grind out, second by agonizing second, in my gut.
My very definition of… Dread.
Now, shoehorn my autistic experience into your punchclock world.
I'm #autistic. Pretty sure #ADHD, too.
How does this affect daily life?
Listen or read here:In my 70s, every ticking second is a countdown to some duty, obligation, deadline... death…
No. That's a lie.
Reality? Hours of numbness... obsessively flicking through screens... frightened to look away and notice the time of day... the season.
Leading to days of dull semi-awareness... punctuated by trips to the bathroom. Between delivered pizzas.
And moments of terror when despite my best dim-witted efforts, I see 9:27 out of the corner of my eye.
And the sun screams, 'Hey, it's morning. You gotta get going. You got stuff to do.'
Or maybe it's 3:19 am. So the moon shames me with, 'Well, there goes another day you didn't meet expectations.'
Every timepiece I can remember was like a prison guard's gun...
...The real power enforcing order.
The calendar that told the doctor that 2 weeks late is too long... so he forced my delivery with forceps.
Or the school bell that announced precisely when I must be silent... or pee.
#MentalHealth #Psychology #neurotwitter
The alarms shrieking at the factory door. Time clocks measuring the distance to starvation. Calendars counting days til the next vacation, back to school, parental promotion... and move to a new town.
Podcast: Every Clock is a Handgun in My Autistic Time
THEY measure my time by widgets per hour. ME? Joy per minute...👉 https://johnnyprofaneknapp.substack.com/p/podcast-every-clock-is-a-handgun-2ee
If you enjoyed this thread, please consider a free subscription to my subStack to get all new releases.
And, please like and share? Your repost may be the only way #neurodivergent voices can break through the algorithm.
-
CW: Every Clock Is a Handgun in My Autistic Time: Adult language, intense images
Hey! Back after 7 months of the "shys." Missed y'all!
Perfect chance to talk Autistic Time:
Every clock is a handgun pointed at my head
Every tick, tick… fucking tick
Tolling Fear, Doom… dread
Click. Slide. Cock… click.Time doesn't flow smoothly for me. It's more like waves and troughs.
If I'm interested in what you're saying, what I'm reading… hours fly by. In fact, if I'm really into my passion… painting, cooking, whatev… time has no meaning.
I'm outside of time. In a place indistinguishable from… Joy.
Boredom?
A slow, annoying hands-and-knees crawl
across wooden schoolroom floor boards…
taking secret, furtive over-the-shoulder glances
at a second hand stubbornly sweeping.So, depression, anxiety… DEADLINES? They grind out, second by agonizing second, in my gut.
My very definition of… Dread.
Now, shoehorn my autistic experience into your punchclock world.
I'm #autistic. Pretty sure #ADHD, too.
How does this affect daily life?
Listen or read here:In my 70s, every ticking second is a countdown to some duty, obligation, deadline... death…
No. That's a lie.
Reality? Hours of numbness... obsessively flicking through screens... frightened to look away and notice the time of day... the season.
Leading to days of dull semi-awareness... punctuated by trips to the bathroom. Between delivered pizzas.
And moments of terror when despite my best dim-witted efforts, I see 9:27 out of the corner of my eye.
And the sun screams, 'Hey, it's morning. You gotta get going. You got stuff to do.'
Or maybe it's 3:19 am. So the moon shames me with, 'Well, there goes another day you didn't meet expectations.'
Every timepiece I can remember was like a prison guard's gun...
...The real power enforcing order.
The calendar that told the doctor that 2 weeks late is too long... so he forced my delivery with forceps.
Or the school bell that announced precisely when I must be silent... or pee.
#MentalHealth #Psychology #neurotwitter
The alarms shrieking at the factory door. Time clocks measuring the distance to starvation. Calendars counting days til the next vacation, back to school, parental promotion... and move to a new town.
Podcast: Every Clock is a Handgun in My Autistic Time
THEY measure my time by widgets per hour. ME? Joy per minute...👉 https://johnnyprofaneknapp.substack.com/p/podcast-every-clock-is-a-handgun-2ee
If you enjoyed this thread, please consider a free subscription to my subStack to get all new releases.
And, please like and share? Your repost may be the only way #neurodivergent voices can break through the algorithm.
-
Mathilde Wantenaar on her new opera A Song for the Moon: ‘With music you can achieve anything’
Mahtilde Wantenaar (c) Karen van Gilst
In 2013 Mathilde Wantenaar (Amsterdam, 1993) participated in the project Boom|Amsterdam is an opera, two years later she wrote the mini-opera Personar for the first edition of the Opera Forward Festival. In March her family opera Een lied voor de maan (A Song for the Moon) was to have its world premiere in that very festival. Like all concerts in the Netherlands the performances were cancelled because of the outbreak of Covid-19. Let’s hope the planned performances in Madrid, Munich and Aix-en-Provence in May and June will proceed. Here’s the interview I conducted in February.
Mathilde Wantenaar’s love for music was instilled by her parents. Her mother teaches singing, her father plays the accordion, piano and bandoneon, and as long as she can remember she was surrounded by music at home. She played the guitar and cello herself, accompanied her mother’s students and sometimes sang along with them. She also composed her own pieces early on. – Something she initially considered to be her ‘own crazy little thing’; the idea of becoming a composer only arose when she took part in a composition project by Asko|Schönberg at secondary school.
Human voice
In 2011 she enrolled for the preparatory course at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, where she subsequently studied composition, with cello, piano and singing as secondary subjects. Already during her studies she won several prizes, among others in the Alba Rosa Viëtor Composition Competition and the Princess Christina Competition. After graduating in 2016 she applied for a follow-up study in singing at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.
From early childhood Wantenaar has had a great affinity with the human voice. In recent years this has led to a series of successful vocal works for renowned Dutch musicians and ensembles such as the soprano Johannette Zomer, the quintet Wishful Singing, the Netherlands Chamber Choir and the Dutch Radio Choir. It was obvious that one day there would be a sequel to her 20-minute opera Personar with which she concluded her composition studies.
Opera
‘As a child I regularly went to operas with my parents’, says Wantenaar. ‘I secretly dreamed of composing one myself, even though I initially considered my children’s pieces and rumblings at the piano to be a private thing. In that respect I lived completely in my own fantasy world. – Until I started thinking about what I would become when I grew up. When I auditioned for the Conservatory of Amsterdam, I was asked where I saw myself in ten years’ time. I answered I hoped to write an opera for Dutch National Opera. – For the big stage.’ She smiles furtively, as if she were ashamed of her youthful hubris.
That’s why she immediately accepted when Dutch National Opera offered her to take part in the workshop ‘composing for a youthful audience’ of the European Network of Opera Academies. The idea of creating a fairy-tale opera originated in 2017, during a workshop conducted by dramaturge Willem Bruls at La Monnaie in Brussels. ‘We formed a team, in which this idea bubbled up. But the question was what kind of fairy-tale exactly? So we started reading a lot of books and someone from the team tipped A Song for the Moon by Toon Tellegen, which she had read to her children herself.’
Toon Tellegen
‘I’ve known Toon Tellegen’s work for a long time, my parents used to read his stories to me when I was little. I still enjoy them. – Occasionally I read them to my boyfriend before we go to sleep. During a period when I was out of my depth at the conservatory I read the collection Misschien wisten zij alles (Maybe they knew everything) in one go. The stories are at the same time comforting, uplifting, wonderful and above all very beautiful. They lifted me above my grief and made me calm.’
However, she did not yet know A Song for the Moon when it was proposed. ‘When I read it, I was immediately touched. It appealed to me that Tellegen broaches themes like loneliness, identity, disappointment and friendship. I especially like the fact that music plays a central role in it, ideal for an opera. The Mole, the main character, undergoes a true development. In the beginning he is a bit shy and insecure, but in the end he crawls out of his shell thanks to the music, makes friends and goes out into the wide world.’
Cheering up the Moon
Wantenaar wrote the libretto herself, together with Willem Bruls, keeping as close as possible to the original: ‘Toon Tellegen’s language is already very musical and imitable. There are five singers and six instrumentalists and the opera lasts about an hour.’
‘In the first act, the Mole is on stage alone. He is lonely and seeks contact with the Moon, but when he greets it he gets no response. He wonders why. Can’t the Moon talk, doesn’t he want to talk, or doesn’t he know what to say? All those things of course also concern the Mole himself, but he doesn’t want to face his own loneliness. He decides to write a song to cheer up the Moon. This proves not to be easy, but in the end he succeeds and shows it to the Grasshopper, who is a conductor.’
‘Together they form an orchestra in the second act, with singing mice and Frog, the diva-tenor. This act is a somewhat comical counterpart to the quiet and sad first movement. They rehearse the song and perform it for the Moon, but when they look up expectantly afterwards, it looks rather sad. Everyone is deeply disappointed and the Mole crawls back into his little hole defeated. He wonders if the Moon is angry now, and may come down to shine straight in his face.’
The power of music
‘In the third and final act the Mole receives composition lessons from the wise Cricket. He looks at the song and says: “I know! It’s a beautiful song, but gloomy.” He changes a lowered tone (a flat tone is calles “mol” in Dutch) into a sharp one (a raised tone), upon which the song suddenly becomes cheerful. Yet the Mole doesn’t quite dare to believe in it yet. He needs the courage of the Grasshopper to present the new version to the Moon.’
‘This time the Moon does looks happy afterwards, he even glows! For a moment the Mole still has doubts about himself, but then he realizes he is good as he is: “I am the Mole and I remain the Mole. Sometimes I’m gloomy, but sometimes I’m cheerful.” He finds the courage to step up to the Earthworm and make his first real friendship. So everything turns out all right at the end of the opera.’
‘The great thing is that the story is easy for children to follow, but at the same time has so much philosophical depth that it is also interesting for adults. The Cricket sings: “With music you can achieve anything”. To me, that’s the core of this opera.’
More info and playlist here.
#ASongForTheMoon #DutchNationalOpera #MathildeWantenaar #ToonTellegen #WillemBruls
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Short Story Review: Herbert W. Franke’s “Slum” (1970, trans. by Chris Herriman 1973)
Today I’m joined again by Rachel S. Cordasco, the creator of the indispensable website and resource Speculative Fiction in Translation, for the seventh installment of our series exploring non-English language SF worlds. Last time we covered Izumi Suzuki’s disturbed shocker “Terminal Boredom” (1984, trans. by Daniel Joseph 2021).
Please note that Rachel and I are interested in learning about a large range of authors and works vs. only tracking down the best. That means we’ll encounter some stinkers. This time we have an interesting German-language tale of ecological dystopia from Austria.
You can read Herbert W. Franke’s “Slum” (1970, trans. by Chris Herriman 1973) here if you have an Internet Archive account. This is an six page story. It’s really hard to talk about it in any substantial way without revealing spoilers.
Thank you Cora Buhlert for the recommendation!
Enjoy!
- Gianni Benvenuti’s cover for the 1978 edition
Rachel S. Cordasco’s Review
Austrian-born author and cyberneticist Herbert W. Franke used speculative fiction to imagine distant planets and alternative societies for over half a century. Known to Anglophone readers mostly for three novels translated in the 1970s (The Orchid Cage, The Mind Net, and Zone Null) and a few short stories, Franke asked readers to think through what “exploration” really means and the responsibilities that the explorers have to those whom they find (or don’t find). Appearing first in English in F&SF (1963), Franke was subsequently featured in Franz Rottensteiner’s three major SFT anthologies: View From Another Shore: European Science Fiction (1973),The Best of Austrian Science Fiction (2001), and The Black Mirror and Other Stories: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Germany and Austria (2008). Other Franke stories appeared in Donald A. Wollheim’s The Best from the Rest of the World (1976) and James Gunn’sThe Road to Science Fiction 6: Around the World (1998).
The story under consideration today, “Slum,” shares with Franke’s translated novels a plot centered around humans discovering an alien civilization and attempting to understand it. In The Orchid Cage, for example, the explorers have to figure out why a mechanized city on an Earth-like planet was abandoned. “Slum” begins by asking us to assume that the “expedition team” is returning from another planet, but it is only much later in the story that we learn that this isn’t the case. One particularly interesting note about the first paragraph is how it channels the crime drama Dragnet airing on US television in the 1950s and 1960s (“Just the facts,” the chairman of the Commission demands from the expedition team). According to Gundolf S. Freyermuth in a Medium article on the topic, the Dragnet franchise, which had begun with radio broadcasts in the 1940s in the US, was adapted for TV in West Germany in 1957 (and was quite popular). So why would Franke open a science fiction story as if it were a crime drama? Perhaps to heighten the tension, or more likely, to signal that, despite what one would expect from a Franke tale, this particular one is very firmly set on Earth.
Structured as an interrogatory dialogue, “Slum” slowly unfolds the story of an expedition team asked by the Institute for Ecological Research to find out why the “outer air” had changed and why the bacteria count was up. Soon we learn, through Govin (a member of the team) that humanity had thought that “the outside world was dead. After all, it’d been years since anyone had left the suboceanic cities.” Over a decade later, French-Canadian author Elisabeth Vonarburg would explore a similar situation (The Silent City), where humanity has retreated underground following an ecological disaster, assuming that nothing above ground is left alive (only to find out a century later that they were very wrong). Following the chairman’s instructions to give “just the facts,” the team carefully explains exactly what happened after they reached the surface: they took fully-loaded vehicles that would allow them to explore in comfort and safety. At first, all they saw was ruin: garbage, dust, fog. Then rats. That’s when the team first started to doubt what they had been told about the surface—the rats were actually fat, as if they had been eating well, suggesting that the surface was not dead at all.
Spliced into the story are glimpses of a videoscreen showing a young girl playing with stuffed animals and candy wrappers. But the team ignores the girl, telling the commissioner about the string of bad luck they had soon after setting out across the ruinous landscape. One of their vehicles falls into a pool of sulphuric acid, they detect a gamma radiation field near their site, a crocodile-like creature drags off one of the team members, a fire breaks out, a building collapses suddenly, etc. The team members keep chalking everything up to natural causes until one of them hears crying. This is where the girl comes in—a team member discovers her being beaten by a man, but when he tries to help her after the man runs off, she scratches him and tries to get free. When the team takes the girl and tries to get back to their one remaining vehicle, the “men in rags, freaks and cripples with ugly faces” chase them and try to stop them from escaping. One of them shoots and kills an expedition member. Not long after, the team is retrieved and brought back underground.
As Petrovski, one of the team members, then asks, “ ‘what now?…Those are human beings out there, and we were never even aware of their existence. They must be the descendents of the ones who didn’t emigrate—the ones who chose smog, filth and pollution over the purity of suboceanic life.’” To this, the commissioner asks “ ‘is it our duty to help them?…Should we take them in, open our safe, hygienic world to them—to others like that little girl?’ ” The ultimate question then is asked without being attributed to any particular character, the narrator seemingly putting it directly to the reader: “Where did their responsibility lie? Out there? Or with those inside?”
One can detect a kind of simmering contempt on the part of the narrator…for the sanctimonious expedition members. Petrovski’s use of the word “purity” suggests that he can’t even conceive that any lifestyle other than his own would be desired. The girl herself, as the story tells us, fought as hard as she could to stay where she was, even though she was very young and being beaten by someone who might have been her father or older brother. The team (what’s left of it) asks itself if it should “help” those who have been living on the surface, despite the fact that those surface dwellers did everything they could to drive off what they considered intruders (not the kind of attitude someone would have if they wanted to be rescued). Assuming that their underground civilization is superior, the team members sit around wondering if they should share their bounty with the surface civilization, as if the latter would even want it.
The story’s title itself makes it abundantly clear that Franke is asking his readers to think about their own assumptions when it comes to city-dwellers and slum-dwellers in our own civilization. Is it pure selflessness for the wealthy and well-to-do to move those from the slums away from their homes, just because the former thinks it would be good for the latter? Who gets to decide what is best for whom? Which brings us back to the first paragraph…perhaps Franke’s channeling of Dragnet and its self-described attempt to treat events with the cold eye of objectivity is highly ironic, suggesting that, just as we cannot know what is “best” for others, we cannot remain objective when it comes to our assumptions about the value of our own lifestyles.
- A selection of X Magazin issues
Joachim Boaz’s Review
3.5/5 (Good)
Preliminary Publication note: Herbert W. Franke’s “Slum” (1970, trans. by Chris Herriman 1973) first appeared in English translation in View from Another Shore, ed. Franz Rottensteiner (1973). I’ve been unable to track down the exact original location of the German original other than a 1970 issue of X magazin under the title “In den Slums.” The View from Another Shore anthology contains one of my absolute favorite non-English language short stories: Lino Aldani’s “Good Night, Sophie” (1963). I look forward to working my way through the rest of the stories!
The Institute for Ecological Research sends out a team from humanity’s underwater cities to explore Earth’s surface after detecting a “change in the composition of the outer air” (118). The survivors of the expedition relay their story to the Office of Investigation. Looming over the interrogation is a giant videoscreen with an unusual scene: a young girl playing with “colorful foil-wrapped bonbons,” which she furtively hides behind stuff animals (117). The details unfold in a dialogue between investigators and the members of the team: we learn of the decaying human-made world above, the huddled survivors and their decrepit rituals of survival, and a profound question of morality and our responsibility for our fellow humans.
The story’s ending hints at the implications for the lives of those who fled the destruction above. Franke suggests the Earth is an integrated system, we cannot hide from the impact of pollution. We cannot hide in bunkers or under the ocean. Human transformation of the planet will introduce set of moral questions that are all too easy to dismiss by those who manage to survive in relative comfort “not our problem.” While some might critique Franke’s vision as a bit on the nose, despite global warming’s overt impact on our daily lives too many of us shrug it off in a similar manner.
An interesting little vignette told in a detached pseudo-scientific manner, that suggests a macro-ecological unity and the inability to escape the environmental devastation we unleash on our planet. I look forward to tackling a more substantial Herbert W. Franke work like Zone Null (1970, trans. Chris Herriman 1974). Somewhat recommended for the average fan of 1970s SF. If you have an interested in SF commentary on the ecological impact of humanity on our world, track this one down.
For book reviews consult the INDEX
For cover art posts consult the INDEX
For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX
#1970s #bookReview #bookReviews #books #fiction #FrankHerbert #HerbertWFranke #sciFi #scienceFiction #technology
-
Finally Friday Reads: Page Not Found
“The National Divorce is a difficult time for all of us.” John Buss, repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It seems uniquely American to be focused on the drama between two rich narcissistic men when so many things are going sideways in this country and this world. It’s embarrassing and depressing.
The current zeitgeist appears to be privileged, cis white men trying to get rid of their small penis energy by displaying a hypertoxic version of masculinity. The entire White House has a Lord of the Flies vibe about it. The press has totally gotten carried away with the narcissistic displays of abuse, seemingly jolting between adolescent bouts of testosterone overdose, middle-life crises complete with bright red Teslas, and male menopause.
Meanwhile, a coterie of women display Lady Macbeth levels of ruthlessness, ambition, and descent into madness and body dysmorphia with their clownish plastic surgery. This is a mad court worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy with policies worthy of a Sinclair Lewis novel. The level of ignorance on display is beyond description. I can’t believe the news all day yesterday was obsessed with the madness of Yam Tits and Musk. Let’s focus on the damage they’ve done and leave them to their latest reality show.
I think political cartoonists have a better take on this ordeal than any media outlet. Then there’s the silent majorities in Congress, saying nothing, and doing anything but the people’s business. Not since the Iraq war have I seen more shock and awe. They governed during Watergate. Are they all afraid of the cult that serves Yam Tits? Maybe we should flood their offices with copies of the Constitution with Sharpie instructions saying DO YOUR JOB!
I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder.
Right now, I’ll start with ProPublica, which has reliably searched out stories worthy of Upton Sinclair or Nellie Bly. Once again, our own government is doing wrong by our veterans. It’s quite sad. “DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. We obtained records showing how a Department of Government Efficiency staffer with no medical experience used artificial intelligence to identify which VA contracts to kill. “AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” one expert said.” This bit of investigative journalism is by Brandon Roberts, Vernal Coleman, and Eric Umansky.
The more I know about AI, see its use, and am forced to sit in seminars to learn the Purdue way of dealing with it, the more I want to write a sci-fi book where their programs go mad. I do not trust bros with personality disorders, likely on the spectrum, to think with real human insight. It makes me long for Isaac Asimov.
As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.
The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”
The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.
The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.
VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.
We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.
ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”
Cary Coglianese, professor of law and of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, said he was troubled by the use of these general-purpose large language models, or LLMs. “I don’t think off-the-shelf LLMs have a great deal of reliability for something as complex and involved as this,” he said.
Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”
Though Lavingia has talked about his time at DOGE previously, this is the first time his work has been examined in detail and the first time he’s publicly explained his process, down to specific lines of code.
Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at ProPublica. “Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to “Munch” Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health.”
Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”
It turns out, a lot of mistakes were made as DOGE and the VA rushed to implement President Donald Trump’s February executive order mandating all of the VA’s contracts be reviewed within 30 days.
ProPublica obtained the code and prompts — the instructions given to the AI model — used to review the contracts and interviewed Lavingia and experts in both AI and government procurement. We are publishing an analysis of those prompts to help the public understand how this technology is being deployed in the federal government.
The experts found numerous and troubling flaws: the code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.
Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools. He also stressed that he knew his list of what he called “MUNCHABLE” contracts would be vetted by others before a final decision was made.
Even the word “munchable” makes these guys sound like 7th graders. I don’t even know what to say about the University of Michigan. I was a 7th grader when anti-Vietnam War protests picked up, but I don’t recall anything like this.
However, all over our institutions are in the service of racist and xenophobic Big Brother. (I really wish I could stop using references to dystopian literature, but sadly, it works.) This is from The Guardian. “University of Michigan using undercover investigators to surveil student Gaza protesters. Revealed: security trailing students on and off campus as video shows investigator faking disability when confronted.”
The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.
The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.
Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.
The undercover investigators appear to work for Detroit-based City Shield, a private security group, and some of their evidence was used by Michigan prosecutors to charge and jail students, according to a Guardian review of police records, university spending records and video collected in legal discovery. Most charges were later dropped. Public spending records from the U-M board of regents, the school’s governing body, show the university paid at least $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to City Shield’s parent company, Ameri-Shield.
Among those who say they’re being regularly followed is Katarina Keating, part of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (Safe), a local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Keating said the surveillance has caused her to feel “on edge”, and she often looks over her shoulder since November, when she was first followed.
“But on another level it sometimes feels comedic because it’s so insane that they have spent millions of dollars to hire some goons to follow campus activists around,” Keating added. “It’s just such a waste of money and time.”
How’s this for government efficiency? The NYPD and ICE mistakenly arrest a Chilean woman on vacation in New York City. Police left her 12-year-old daughter on the street alone. This country is no longer safe from arbitrary arrest and detention by morans in law enforcement.
There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government. This is reported in the Washington Post by Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance. That’s a lot of reporters for a lot of agencies. “Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people. Across the government, officials are rehiring federal workers who were forced out or encouraged to resign.” Do you suppose all the Trump/Musk drama is just a distraction from the kind of news that’s falling off the front pages but should be screamed in front-page headlines? They fucked up folks! Let’s bury the lede!
Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.
Since Musk left the White House last week, he and Trump have fallen out bitterly, sniping at each other in public over the cost of Trump’s sweeping tax legislation and government subsidies for Musk’s businesses. But even before that, the administration was working to undo some of DOGE’s highest-profile actions.
Trump officials are trying to recover not only people who were fired, but also thousands of experienced senior staffers who are opting for a voluntary exit as the administration rolls out a second resignation offer. Thousands more staff are returning in fits and starts as a conflicting patchwork of court decisions overturn some of Trump’s large-scale firings, especially his Valentine’s Day dismissal of all probationary workers, those with one or two years of government service and fewer job protections. A federal judge in April ordered the president to reinstate probationary workers dismissed from 20 federal agencies, although a few days later the Supreme Court — in a different case — halted another judge’s order to reinstate a smaller group.
Some fired federal employees, especially those at retirement age or who have since secured jobs in the private sector, are proving reluctant to return. So the administration is seeking work-arounds and stopgaps, including asking remaining staff to serve in new roles, work overtime or volunteer to fill vacancies, according to interviews with 18 federal workers across eight agencies and messages obtained by The Washington Post. A Post review found recent messy re-hirings at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, the State Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In some cases, the government is posting new online job listings very similar to positions it recently vacated, a Post review of USAJobs found
The ever-shifting personnel changes are yet another strain on a workforce already weary of Trump-induced uncertainty, said current and former employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“They wanted to show they were gutting the government, but there was no thought about what parts might be worth keeping,” said one FDA staffer who was fired and rehired. “Now it feels like it was all just a game to them.”
Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment. It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from The Harvard Crimson. “Judge Blocks Trump Proclamation Banning International Students From Entering U.S. on Harvard Visas.” I’m just seeing Trump failures everywhere. No wonder they needed a new reality show season.
A federal judge granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order hours after the University asked her to block the Trump administration’s Wednesday proclamation banning international students from entering the United States on Harvard-sponsored visas.
The order was issued just four hours after Harvard filed an amended complaint accusing the Trump administration of retaliating against the University by preventing incoming international students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard.
U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs also announced that the court would extend the TRO first granted to Harvard on May 23 — one day after the DHS revoked Harvard’s eligibility to host international students — until June 20, the date requested by the University. Burroughs had already agreed to extend the TRO once before, following a May 29 hearing.
Thursday’s TRO will reinstate international students’ ability to enter the country to attend Harvard until a June 16 hearing scheduled by Burroughs — but the University will need to file for a preliminary injunction to extend its ability to host international students until the court determines its legality in court.
In the amended complaint, Harvard wrote that Trump’s proclamation was “a transparent attempt to circumvent the temporary restraining order this Court already entered against the summary revocation of Harvard’s SEVP certification.”
It argued that — without urgent action — the proclamation would have dramatic costs for admitted students attempting to enter the U.S. and subject current students to fear they would be arbitrarily deported.
Burroughs, in an order published well after working hours Thursday night, deemed that Harvard had made a “sufficient showing” that it would sustain “immediate and irreparable harm” unless a TRO was granted.
But both the TRO — and a future preliminary injunction, if Harvard seeks one and Burroughs rules favorably — are only provisional protections.
CBS shows that the Yam Tits Administration still thinks getting every little thing to the Supreme Court will solve all of its problems. Melissa Quinn reports that “Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow mass layoffs at Education Department.
President Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for it to continue with its efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and lay off more than 1,300 employees while a legal fight over the future of the department moves forward.
The Justice Department is seeking the high court’s intervention in a pair of disputes brought by a group of 20 states, school districts and teachers unions, which challenge Mr. Trump’s plans to unwind the Department of Education. The president signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure to the maximum extent allowed under the law.
As part of Mr. Trump’s pledge to get rid of the department, the administration canceled a host of grants and executed a reduction in force, or a layoff, that impacted 1,378 employees — roughly a third of the department’s workforce. Affected workers were placed on administrative leave and were to receive full pay and benefits until June 9.
Mr. Trump also announced that the Small Business Administration would take over the Education Department’s student-loan portfolio, and the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special education, nutrition and other related services.
In response to the lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s actions, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the administration from carrying out its layoffs, finding that the reduction-in-force was a unilateral effort to close the department, which would violate the separation of powers.
Okay, this is an update, and I just had to put it up
Oh, speaking of those delightful Republican Congress Critters, here’s a headline for you from The Guardian. “Republican senator employs aide fired by DeSantis over neo-Nazi imagery. Nate Hochman, staffer for Eric Schmitt, also peddled far-right conspiracy theories as experts decry rise in extremism.” Gosh, another Cis White Male Christian Nationalist for Adolf! What a surprise!
A staffer for Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt was previously fired from Ron DeSantis’s unsuccessful presidential campaign after making a video containing neo-Nazi imagery, and later peddled far-right conspiracy theories in a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank.
Nate Hochman’s job in the hard-right senator’s office, along with earlier Trump appointments to executive agencies, suggest to some experts there are few barriers to far-right activists making a career in Republican party politics.
The Guardian contacted Eric Schmitt’s office for comment.
Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Guardian: “Hochman’s position shows once again that there are no guardrails against extremists in the GOP nowadays.”
She added: “Racism, antisemitism and other abhorrent beliefs don’t seem to stop extremists from appointments with far-right politicians, including in the highest office of the presidency.”
Hochman, 26, has worked for Schmitt since February, according to congressional information website LegiStorm, a development that was first noted on political newsletter Liberal Currents.
He has also posted dozens of times to X to publicize Schmitt’s initiatives, media appearances, and speeches.
The Guardian reported last September on Hochman’s previous job at America 2100, an organization founded in 2023 as a thinktank. The organization was founded by Mike Needham, who served as Marco Rubio’s chief of staff from 2018 to 2023 when Rubio was a senator and who is once again his chief of staff at the state department.
In that and subsequent reporting, it was revealed that Hochman’s work for America 2100 was focused on producing videos, some of which targeted Haitian migrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and others that rehearsed conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people and human rights organizations.
This was the latest in a string of scandals in the young operative’s political career.
In July 2023 he was fired from the presidential campaign of Florida governor Ron DeSantis after retweeting a pro-DeSantis, anti-Trump video.
As the Guardian reported, the video portrayed a “‘Wojak’ meme, a sad-looking man popular on the right, against headlines about Trump policy failures before showing the meme cheering up to headlines about DeSantis and images of the governor at work”, all to the tune of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.
Finally, it superimposed DeSantis on to ranks of marching soldiers and a Sonnenrad – a Norse symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis.
As Hochman departed the campaign, Axios reported he had made the video but endeavored to make it “appear as if it was produced externally”.
The New York Times has a Guest Op-Ed up from two law professors about how the Trump administration is giving a loyalty test to anyone looking for a job within the Federal Government. How unconstitutional is that? “How to Stack the Federal Work Force With ‘Patriotic Americans’ Who Agree With Trump.”
The White House took a step last week that significantly undercuts the idea that federal employment should be nonpartisan. A May 29 memo from the Office of Personnel Management may seem technical, but the policy that it outlines has grave implications for how the government functions and creates an unconstitutional political test for federal hiring.
At heart, the new policy is about viewpoint discrimination: People applying for federal jobs whose views the Trump administration does not like will not be hired. This is the most recent of the administration’s actions to undermine the nonpartisan Civil Service and consolidate control over almost all federal employees in the White House.
In a densely worded, 12-page memo, Vince Haley, an assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting O.P.M. director, make fealty to the president’s agenda a criterion for hiring for most federal positions. Imposing such a litmus test for nonpolitical positions runs afoul of the nearly 150-year-old federal Civil Service law, the 1939 Hatch Act and the First Amendment.
Under federal law, about 4,000 federal jobs are filled by political appointees. These positions allow the president to appoint those who share his views and to remove those who do not support his policy priorities. Most remaining federal jobs are hired based on nonpartisan and objective assessments of merit, and the hiring criteria are tied to the job duties.
The recent memo would, in effect, dramatically expand that exception for political appointees to include everyone at what’s known as level GS-5 or above — a group that includes clerical positions, technicians for soil conservation and firefighters. The ideologies and views of these individuals should play no role in their potential hiring.
The policy announced in the memo requires every person applying for a position level GS-5 or above to submit four essays. One requires that the applicant address: “How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” Another prompt: “How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic or personal experience.”
Imagine that someone applying to be a secretary or a soil technician or a firefighter were to answer with: I believe the founding principles of this country were racist and I do not adhere to them. Or: I will perform my job to the best of my abilities and will follow federal law, but I do not see my position as political in any way.
It’s hard to imagine that those people would be hired. And yet, the Civil Service was created in the 19th century precisely to avoid such politically based hiring. The prohibition on political considerations in hiring was strengthened by the Hatch Act, which was enacted at the behest of conservatives who worried that too many Democrats had been hired to staff New Deal agencies.
One more Op-Ed from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post before I close. “They are not good at this. Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.
On May 29, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a “comprehensive list of sanctuary jurisdictions.” She was “exposing these sanctuary politicians” because they are “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”
But it immediately became clear that the list of more than 500 states, counties and cities was riddled with errors: misspellings, cities and counties mistaken for each other, and places that don’t exist. Cincinnati became “Cincinnatti,” Campbell County (Kentucky) became “Cambell” County, Greeley County (Nebraska) became “Greenley” County, Takoma Park (Maryland) became “Tacoma” Park, while “Martinsville County” (Virginia) was invented. And so on.
Worse, scores of the “sanctuary politicians” she called out turned out to be leaders of MAGA counties and towns with no sanctuary policies on their books. Complaints poured in from Trump allies across the country. “You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document,” said Pat Burns, the Trump-backing mayor of the right-wing stronghold of Huntington Beach, California, mislabeled as a sanctuary city. He told the Associated Press that “somebody’s got to answer” for this “negligent” behavior.
Good luck with that. The only answer was to disappear the list this week, leaving behind a “Page Not Found” error.
Such a massive screwup hadn’t happened since … well, the previous week, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to the White House and released his ballyhooed “Make America Healthy Again” report full of citations of studies that don’t exist, the product of AI hallucinations.
This, in turn, was reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, which targeted an island full of penguins and other unpopulated or sparsely populated corners of the globe — and raised taxes on most of the world based on a math error.
And these, of course, were on top of the “mistakes” that led Trump officials to share war plans with a journalist, to deport people protected by court order, to launch a destructive fight with Harvard University, to fire and then attempt to rehire thousands of crucial federal workers, to cancel and then reinstate various vital government functions, and to misstate, often by orders of magnitude, the alleged savings from its cost-cutting attempts.
Trying to make sense of any of this? Page Not Found.
It’s obvious Trump is not interested in the best and brightest. They give him facts and truth over what he wants to hear and do, and that’s not what his massive need for attention and ego-stroking requires. Oh, up to 4000 words, and I still have managed to do something other than cover the two biggest jerks in the world jousting for air and social media time.
As you know, my Dad bombed NAZIs. I’d like to think I’d be capable of doing something brave if I were called to duty. He made it back. Many others did not. I’d just like to close with a remembrance of D-Day. There are still some D-Day vets out there who returned to the field. This is from the AP. “D-Day veterans return to Normandy to mark 81st anniversary of landings.” I remember growing up in absolute awe of all the men and women I met in my life who helped free the world of Fascists. I do not understand why the country is failing to do that now.
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.
Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.
Harold Terens, a 101-year-old U.S. veteran who last year married his 96-year-old sweetheart near the D-Day beaches, was back in Normandy.
“Freedom is everything,” he said. “I pray for freedom for the whole world. For the war to end in Ukraine, and Russia, and Sudan and Gaza. I think war is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
Terens enlisted in 1942 and shipped to Great Britain the following year, attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as their radio repair technician. On D-Day, Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle.
Let us forever be thankful for their service and sacrifice. May we also remember that we were not alone in these battles. We have allies. At least at this moment. This song by the Dropkick Murphys is about World War 1, but the sentiment is the same.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DDay #ICEKidnappings #JudgesRuleAgainstTrump #TrumpAdministrationScrewUpsAndCrimes #TurningBackTheDogeDisasters
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Finally Friday Reads: Page Not Found
“The National Divorce is a difficult time for all of us.” John Buss, repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It seems uniquely American to be focused on the drama between two rich narcissistic men when so many things are going sideways in this country and this world. It’s embarrassing and depressing.
The current zeitgeist appears to be privileged, cis white men trying to get rid of their small penis energy by displaying a hypertoxic version of masculinity. The entire White House has a Lord of the Flies vibe about it. The press has totally gotten carried away with the narcissistic displays of abuse, seemingly jolting between adolescent bouts of testosterone overdose, middle-life crises complete with bright red Teslas, and male menopause.
Meanwhile, a coterie of women display Lady Macbeth levels of ruthlessness, ambition, and descent into madness and body dysmorphia with their clownish plastic surgery. This is a mad court worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy with policies worthy of a Sinclair Lewis novel. The level of ignorance on display is beyond description. I can’t believe the news all day yesterday was obsessed with the madness of Yam Tits and Musk. Let’s focus on the damage they’ve done and leave them to their latest reality show.
I think political cartoonists have a better take on this ordeal than any media outlet. Then there’s the silent majorities in Congress, saying nothing, and doing anything but the people’s business. Not since the Iraq war have I seen more shock and awe. They governed during Watergate. Are they all afraid of the cult that serves Yam Tits? Maybe we should flood their offices with copies of the Constitution with Sharpie instructions saying DO YOUR JOB!
I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder.
Right now, I’ll start with ProPublica, which has reliably searched out stories worthy of Upton Sinclair or Nellie Bly. Once again, our own government is doing wrong by our veterans. It’s quite sad. “DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. We obtained records showing how a Department of Government Efficiency staffer with no medical experience used artificial intelligence to identify which VA contracts to kill. “AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” one expert said.” This bit of investigative journalism is by Brandon Roberts, Vernal Coleman, and Eric Umansky.
The more I know about AI, see its use, and am forced to sit in seminars to learn the Purdue way of dealing with it, the more I want to write a sci-fi book where their programs go mad. I do not trust bros with personality disorders, likely on the spectrum, to think with real human insight. It makes me long for Isaac Asimov.
As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.
The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”
The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.
The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.
VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.
We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.
ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”
Cary Coglianese, professor of law and of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, said he was troubled by the use of these general-purpose large language models, or LLMs. “I don’t think off-the-shelf LLMs have a great deal of reliability for something as complex and involved as this,” he said.
Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”
Though Lavingia has talked about his time at DOGE previously, this is the first time his work has been examined in detail and the first time he’s publicly explained his process, down to specific lines of code.
Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at ProPublica. “Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to “Munch” Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health.”
Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”
It turns out, a lot of mistakes were made as DOGE and the VA rushed to implement President Donald Trump’s February executive order mandating all of the VA’s contracts be reviewed within 30 days.
ProPublica obtained the code and prompts — the instructions given to the AI model — used to review the contracts and interviewed Lavingia and experts in both AI and government procurement. We are publishing an analysis of those prompts to help the public understand how this technology is being deployed in the federal government.
The experts found numerous and troubling flaws: the code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.
Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools. He also stressed that he knew his list of what he called “MUNCHABLE” contracts would be vetted by others before a final decision was made.
Even the word “munchable” makes these guys sound like 7th graders. I don’t even know what to say about the University of Michigan. I was a 7th grader when anti-Vietnam War protests picked up, but I don’t recall anything like this.
However, all over our institutions are in the service of racist and xenophobic Big Brother. (I really wish I could stop using references to dystopian literature, but sadly, it works.) This is from The Guardian. “University of Michigan using undercover investigators to surveil student Gaza protesters. Revealed: security trailing students on and off campus as video shows investigator faking disability when confronted.”
The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.
The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.
Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.
The undercover investigators appear to work for Detroit-based City Shield, a private security group, and some of their evidence was used by Michigan prosecutors to charge and jail students, according to a Guardian review of police records, university spending records and video collected in legal discovery. Most charges were later dropped. Public spending records from the U-M board of regents, the school’s governing body, show the university paid at least $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to City Shield’s parent company, Ameri-Shield.
Among those who say they’re being regularly followed is Katarina Keating, part of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (Safe), a local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Keating said the surveillance has caused her to feel “on edge”, and she often looks over her shoulder since November, when she was first followed.
“But on another level it sometimes feels comedic because it’s so insane that they have spent millions of dollars to hire some goons to follow campus activists around,” Keating added. “It’s just such a waste of money and time.”
How’s this for government efficiency? The NYPD and ICE mistakenly arrest a Chilean woman on vacation in New York City. Police left her 12-year-old daughter on the street alone. This country is no longer safe from arbitrary arrest and detention by morans in law enforcement.
There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government. This is reported in the Washington Post by Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance. That’s a lot of reporters for a lot of agencies. “Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people. Across the government, officials are rehiring federal workers who were forced out or encouraged to resign.” Do you suppose all the Trump/Musk drama is just a distraction from the kind of news that’s falling off the front pages but should be screamed in front-page headlines? They fucked up folks! Let’s bury the lede!
Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.
Since Musk left the White House last week, he and Trump have fallen out bitterly, sniping at each other in public over the cost of Trump’s sweeping tax legislation and government subsidies for Musk’s businesses. But even before that, the administration was working to undo some of DOGE’s highest-profile actions.
Trump officials are trying to recover not only people who were fired, but also thousands of experienced senior staffers who are opting for a voluntary exit as the administration rolls out a second resignation offer. Thousands more staff are returning in fits and starts as a conflicting patchwork of court decisions overturn some of Trump’s large-scale firings, especially his Valentine’s Day dismissal of all probationary workers, those with one or two years of government service and fewer job protections. A federal judge in April ordered the president to reinstate probationary workers dismissed from 20 federal agencies, although a few days later the Supreme Court — in a different case — halted another judge’s order to reinstate a smaller group.
Some fired federal employees, especially those at retirement age or who have since secured jobs in the private sector, are proving reluctant to return. So the administration is seeking work-arounds and stopgaps, including asking remaining staff to serve in new roles, work overtime or volunteer to fill vacancies, according to interviews with 18 federal workers across eight agencies and messages obtained by The Washington Post. A Post review found recent messy re-hirings at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, the State Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In some cases, the government is posting new online job listings very similar to positions it recently vacated, a Post review of USAJobs found
The ever-shifting personnel changes are yet another strain on a workforce already weary of Trump-induced uncertainty, said current and former employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“They wanted to show they were gutting the government, but there was no thought about what parts might be worth keeping,” said one FDA staffer who was fired and rehired. “Now it feels like it was all just a game to them.”
Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment. It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from The Harvard Crimson. “Judge Blocks Trump Proclamation Banning International Students From Entering U.S. on Harvard Visas.” I’m just seeing Trump failures everywhere. No wonder they needed a new reality show season.
A federal judge granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order hours after the University asked her to block the Trump administration’s Wednesday proclamation banning international students from entering the United States on Harvard-sponsored visas.
The order was issued just four hours after Harvard filed an amended complaint accusing the Trump administration of retaliating against the University by preventing incoming international students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard.
U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs also announced that the court would extend the TRO first granted to Harvard on May 23 — one day after the DHS revoked Harvard’s eligibility to host international students — until June 20, the date requested by the University. Burroughs had already agreed to extend the TRO once before, following a May 29 hearing.
Thursday’s TRO will reinstate international students’ ability to enter the country to attend Harvard until a June 16 hearing scheduled by Burroughs — but the University will need to file for a preliminary injunction to extend its ability to host international students until the court determines its legality in court.
In the amended complaint, Harvard wrote that Trump’s proclamation was “a transparent attempt to circumvent the temporary restraining order this Court already entered against the summary revocation of Harvard’s SEVP certification.”
It argued that — without urgent action — the proclamation would have dramatic costs for admitted students attempting to enter the U.S. and subject current students to fear they would be arbitrarily deported.
Burroughs, in an order published well after working hours Thursday night, deemed that Harvard had made a “sufficient showing” that it would sustain “immediate and irreparable harm” unless a TRO was granted.
But both the TRO — and a future preliminary injunction, if Harvard seeks one and Burroughs rules favorably — are only provisional protections.
CBS shows that the Yam Tits Administration still thinks getting every little thing to the Supreme Court will solve all of its problems. Melissa Quinn reports that “Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow mass layoffs at Education Department.
President Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for it to continue with its efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and lay off more than 1,300 employees while a legal fight over the future of the department moves forward.
The Justice Department is seeking the high court’s intervention in a pair of disputes brought by a group of 20 states, school districts and teachers unions, which challenge Mr. Trump’s plans to unwind the Department of Education. The president signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure to the maximum extent allowed under the law.
As part of Mr. Trump’s pledge to get rid of the department, the administration canceled a host of grants and executed a reduction in force, or a layoff, that impacted 1,378 employees — roughly a third of the department’s workforce. Affected workers were placed on administrative leave and were to receive full pay and benefits until June 9.
Mr. Trump also announced that the Small Business Administration would take over the Education Department’s student-loan portfolio, and the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special education, nutrition and other related services.
In response to the lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s actions, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the administration from carrying out its layoffs, finding that the reduction-in-force was a unilateral effort to close the department, which would violate the separation of powers.
Okay, this is an update, and I just had to put it up
Oh, speaking of those delightful Republican Congress Critters, here’s a headline for you from The Guardian. “Republican senator employs aide fired by DeSantis over neo-Nazi imagery. Nate Hochman, staffer for Eric Schmitt, also peddled far-right conspiracy theories as experts decry rise in extremism.” Gosh, another Cis White Male Christian Nationalist for Adolf! What a surprise!
A staffer for Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt was previously fired from Ron DeSantis’s unsuccessful presidential campaign after making a video containing neo-Nazi imagery, and later peddled far-right conspiracy theories in a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank.
Nate Hochman’s job in the hard-right senator’s office, along with earlier Trump appointments to executive agencies, suggest to some experts there are few barriers to far-right activists making a career in Republican party politics.
The Guardian contacted Eric Schmitt’s office for comment.
Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Guardian: “Hochman’s position shows once again that there are no guardrails against extremists in the GOP nowadays.”
She added: “Racism, antisemitism and other abhorrent beliefs don’t seem to stop extremists from appointments with far-right politicians, including in the highest office of the presidency.”
Hochman, 26, has worked for Schmitt since February, according to congressional information website LegiStorm, a development that was first noted on political newsletter Liberal Currents.
He has also posted dozens of times to X to publicize Schmitt’s initiatives, media appearances, and speeches.
The Guardian reported last September on Hochman’s previous job at America 2100, an organization founded in 2023 as a thinktank. The organization was founded by Mike Needham, who served as Marco Rubio’s chief of staff from 2018 to 2023 when Rubio was a senator and who is once again his chief of staff at the state department.
In that and subsequent reporting, it was revealed that Hochman’s work for America 2100 was focused on producing videos, some of which targeted Haitian migrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and others that rehearsed conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people and human rights organizations.
This was the latest in a string of scandals in the young operative’s political career.
In July 2023 he was fired from the presidential campaign of Florida governor Ron DeSantis after retweeting a pro-DeSantis, anti-Trump video.
As the Guardian reported, the video portrayed a “‘Wojak’ meme, a sad-looking man popular on the right, against headlines about Trump policy failures before showing the meme cheering up to headlines about DeSantis and images of the governor at work”, all to the tune of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.
Finally, it superimposed DeSantis on to ranks of marching soldiers and a Sonnenrad – a Norse symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis.
As Hochman departed the campaign, Axios reported he had made the video but endeavored to make it “appear as if it was produced externally”.
The New York Times has a Guest Op-Ed up from two law professors about how the Trump administration is giving a loyalty test to anyone looking for a job within the Federal Government. How unconstitutional is that? “How to Stack the Federal Work Force With ‘Patriotic Americans’ Who Agree With Trump.”
The White House took a step last week that significantly undercuts the idea that federal employment should be nonpartisan. A May 29 memo from the Office of Personnel Management may seem technical, but the policy that it outlines has grave implications for how the government functions and creates an unconstitutional political test for federal hiring.
At heart, the new policy is about viewpoint discrimination: People applying for federal jobs whose views the Trump administration does not like will not be hired. This is the most recent of the administration’s actions to undermine the nonpartisan Civil Service and consolidate control over almost all federal employees in the White House.
In a densely worded, 12-page memo, Vince Haley, an assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting O.P.M. director, make fealty to the president’s agenda a criterion for hiring for most federal positions. Imposing such a litmus test for nonpolitical positions runs afoul of the nearly 150-year-old federal Civil Service law, the 1939 Hatch Act and the First Amendment.
Under federal law, about 4,000 federal jobs are filled by political appointees. These positions allow the president to appoint those who share his views and to remove those who do not support his policy priorities. Most remaining federal jobs are hired based on nonpartisan and objective assessments of merit, and the hiring criteria are tied to the job duties.
The recent memo would, in effect, dramatically expand that exception for political appointees to include everyone at what’s known as level GS-5 or above — a group that includes clerical positions, technicians for soil conservation and firefighters. The ideologies and views of these individuals should play no role in their potential hiring.
The policy announced in the memo requires every person applying for a position level GS-5 or above to submit four essays. One requires that the applicant address: “How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” Another prompt: “How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic or personal experience.”
Imagine that someone applying to be a secretary or a soil technician or a firefighter were to answer with: I believe the founding principles of this country were racist and I do not adhere to them. Or: I will perform my job to the best of my abilities and will follow federal law, but I do not see my position as political in any way.
It’s hard to imagine that those people would be hired. And yet, the Civil Service was created in the 19th century precisely to avoid such politically based hiring. The prohibition on political considerations in hiring was strengthened by the Hatch Act, which was enacted at the behest of conservatives who worried that too many Democrats had been hired to staff New Deal agencies.
One more Op-Ed from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post before I close. “They are not good at this. Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.
On May 29, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a “comprehensive list of sanctuary jurisdictions.” She was “exposing these sanctuary politicians” because they are “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”
But it immediately became clear that the list of more than 500 states, counties and cities was riddled with errors: misspellings, cities and counties mistaken for each other, and places that don’t exist. Cincinnati became “Cincinnatti,” Campbell County (Kentucky) became “Cambell” County, Greeley County (Nebraska) became “Greenley” County, Takoma Park (Maryland) became “Tacoma” Park, while “Martinsville County” (Virginia) was invented. And so on.
Worse, scores of the “sanctuary politicians” she called out turned out to be leaders of MAGA counties and towns with no sanctuary policies on their books. Complaints poured in from Trump allies across the country. “You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document,” said Pat Burns, the Trump-backing mayor of the right-wing stronghold of Huntington Beach, California, mislabeled as a sanctuary city. He told the Associated Press that “somebody’s got to answer” for this “negligent” behavior.
Good luck with that. The only answer was to disappear the list this week, leaving behind a “Page Not Found” error.
Such a massive screwup hadn’t happened since … well, the previous week, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to the White House and released his ballyhooed “Make America Healthy Again” report full of citations of studies that don’t exist, the product of AI hallucinations.
This, in turn, was reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, which targeted an island full of penguins and other unpopulated or sparsely populated corners of the globe — and raised taxes on most of the world based on a math error.
And these, of course, were on top of the “mistakes” that led Trump officials to share war plans with a journalist, to deport people protected by court order, to launch a destructive fight with Harvard University, to fire and then attempt to rehire thousands of crucial federal workers, to cancel and then reinstate various vital government functions, and to misstate, often by orders of magnitude, the alleged savings from its cost-cutting attempts.
Trying to make sense of any of this? Page Not Found.
It’s obvious Trump is not interested in the best and brightest. They give him facts and truth over what he wants to hear and do, and that’s not what his massive need for attention and ego-stroking requires. Oh, up to 4000 words, and I still have managed to do something other than cover the two biggest jerks in the world jousting for air and social media time.
As you know, my Dad bombed NAZIs. I’d like to think I’d be capable of doing something brave if I were called to duty. He made it back. Many others did not. I’d just like to close with a remembrance of D-Day. There are still some D-Day vets out there who returned to the field. This is from the AP. “D-Day veterans return to Normandy to mark 81st anniversary of landings.” I remember growing up in absolute awe of all the men and women I met in my life who helped free the world of Fascists. I do not understand why the country is failing to do that now.
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.
Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.
Harold Terens, a 101-year-old U.S. veteran who last year married his 96-year-old sweetheart near the D-Day beaches, was back in Normandy.
“Freedom is everything,” he said. “I pray for freedom for the whole world. For the war to end in Ukraine, and Russia, and Sudan and Gaza. I think war is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
Terens enlisted in 1942 and shipped to Great Britain the following year, attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as their radio repair technician. On D-Day, Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle.
Let us forever be thankful for their service and sacrifice. May we also remember that we were not alone in these battles. We have allies. At least at this moment. This song by the Dropkick Murphys is about World War 1, but the sentiment is the same.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DDay #ICEKidnappings #JudgesRuleAgainstTrump #TrumpAdministrationScrewUpsAndCrimes #TurningBackTheDogeDisasters
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Finally Friday Reads: Page Not Found
“The National Divorce is a difficult time for all of us.” John Buss, repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It seems uniquely American to be focused on the drama between two rich narcissistic men when so many things are going sideways in this country and this world. It’s embarrassing and depressing.
The current zeitgeist appears to be privileged, cis white men trying to get rid of their small penis energy by displaying a hypertoxic version of masculinity. The entire White House has a Lord of the Flies vibe about it. The press has totally gotten carried away with the narcissistic displays of abuse, seemingly jolting between adolescent bouts of testosterone overdose, middle-life crises complete with bright red Teslas, and male menopause.
Meanwhile, a coterie of women display Lady Macbeth levels of ruthlessness, ambition, and descent into madness and body dysmorphia with their clownish plastic surgery. This is a mad court worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy with policies worthy of a Sinclair Lewis novel. The level of ignorance on display is beyond description. I can’t believe the news all day yesterday was obsessed with the madness of Yam Tits and Musk. Let’s focus on the damage they’ve done and leave them to their latest reality show.
I think political cartoonists have a better take on this ordeal than any media outlet. Then there’s the silent majorities in Congress, saying nothing, and doing anything but the people’s business. Not since the Iraq war have I seen more shock and awe. They governed during Watergate. Are they all afraid of the cult that serves Yam Tits? Maybe we should flood their offices with copies of the Constitution with Sharpie instructions saying DO YOUR JOB!
I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder.
Right now, I’ll start with ProPublica, which has reliably searched out stories worthy of Upton Sinclair or Nellie Bly. Once again, our own government is doing wrong by our veterans. It’s quite sad. “DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. We obtained records showing how a Department of Government Efficiency staffer with no medical experience used artificial intelligence to identify which VA contracts to kill. “AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” one expert said.” This bit of investigative journalism is by Brandon Roberts, Vernal Coleman, and Eric Umansky.
The more I know about AI, see its use, and am forced to sit in seminars to learn the Purdue way of dealing with it, the more I want to write a sci-fi book where their programs go mad. I do not trust bros with personality disorders, likely on the spectrum, to think with real human insight. It makes me long for Isaac Asimov.
As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.
The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”
The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.
The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.
VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.
We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.
ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”
Cary Coglianese, professor of law and of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, said he was troubled by the use of these general-purpose large language models, or LLMs. “I don’t think off-the-shelf LLMs have a great deal of reliability for something as complex and involved as this,” he said.
Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”
Though Lavingia has talked about his time at DOGE previously, this is the first time his work has been examined in detail and the first time he’s publicly explained his process, down to specific lines of code.
Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at ProPublica. “Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to “Munch” Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health.”
Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”
It turns out, a lot of mistakes were made as DOGE and the VA rushed to implement President Donald Trump’s February executive order mandating all of the VA’s contracts be reviewed within 30 days.
ProPublica obtained the code and prompts — the instructions given to the AI model — used to review the contracts and interviewed Lavingia and experts in both AI and government procurement. We are publishing an analysis of those prompts to help the public understand how this technology is being deployed in the federal government.
The experts found numerous and troubling flaws: the code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.
Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools. He also stressed that he knew his list of what he called “MUNCHABLE” contracts would be vetted by others before a final decision was made.
Even the word “munchable” makes these guys sound like 7th graders. I don’t even know what to say about the University of Michigan. I was a 7th grader when anti-Vietnam War protests picked up, but I don’t recall anything like this.
However, all over our institutions are in the service of racist and xenophobic Big Brother. (I really wish I could stop using references to dystopian literature, but sadly, it works.) This is from The Guardian. “University of Michigan using undercover investigators to surveil student Gaza protesters. Revealed: security trailing students on and off campus as video shows investigator faking disability when confronted.”
The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.
The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.
Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.
The undercover investigators appear to work for Detroit-based City Shield, a private security group, and some of their evidence was used by Michigan prosecutors to charge and jail students, according to a Guardian review of police records, university spending records and video collected in legal discovery. Most charges were later dropped. Public spending records from the U-M board of regents, the school’s governing body, show the university paid at least $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to City Shield’s parent company, Ameri-Shield.
Among those who say they’re being regularly followed is Katarina Keating, part of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (Safe), a local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Keating said the surveillance has caused her to feel “on edge”, and she often looks over her shoulder since November, when she was first followed.
“But on another level it sometimes feels comedic because it’s so insane that they have spent millions of dollars to hire some goons to follow campus activists around,” Keating added. “It’s just such a waste of money and time.”
How’s this for government efficiency? The NYPD and ICE mistakenly arrest a Chilean woman on vacation in New York City. Police left her 12-year-old daughter on the street alone. This country is no longer safe from arbitrary arrest and detention by morans in law enforcement.
There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government. This is reported in the Washington Post by Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance. That’s a lot of reporters for a lot of agencies. “Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people. Across the government, officials are rehiring federal workers who were forced out or encouraged to resign.” Do you suppose all the Trump/Musk drama is just a distraction from the kind of news that’s falling off the front pages but should be screamed in front-page headlines? They fucked up folks! Let’s bury the lede!
Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.
Since Musk left the White House last week, he and Trump have fallen out bitterly, sniping at each other in public over the cost of Trump’s sweeping tax legislation and government subsidies for Musk’s businesses. But even before that, the administration was working to undo some of DOGE’s highest-profile actions.
Trump officials are trying to recover not only people who were fired, but also thousands of experienced senior staffers who are opting for a voluntary exit as the administration rolls out a second resignation offer. Thousands more staff are returning in fits and starts as a conflicting patchwork of court decisions overturn some of Trump’s large-scale firings, especially his Valentine’s Day dismissal of all probationary workers, those with one or two years of government service and fewer job protections. A federal judge in April ordered the president to reinstate probationary workers dismissed from 20 federal agencies, although a few days later the Supreme Court — in a different case — halted another judge’s order to reinstate a smaller group.
Some fired federal employees, especially those at retirement age or who have since secured jobs in the private sector, are proving reluctant to return. So the administration is seeking work-arounds and stopgaps, including asking remaining staff to serve in new roles, work overtime or volunteer to fill vacancies, according to interviews with 18 federal workers across eight agencies and messages obtained by The Washington Post. A Post review found recent messy re-hirings at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, the State Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In some cases, the government is posting new online job listings very similar to positions it recently vacated, a Post review of USAJobs found
The ever-shifting personnel changes are yet another strain on a workforce already weary of Trump-induced uncertainty, said current and former employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“They wanted to show they were gutting the government, but there was no thought about what parts might be worth keeping,” said one FDA staffer who was fired and rehired. “Now it feels like it was all just a game to them.”
Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment. It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from The Harvard Crimson. “Judge Blocks Trump Proclamation Banning International Students From Entering U.S. on Harvard Visas.” I’m just seeing Trump failures everywhere. No wonder they needed a new reality show season.
A federal judge granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order hours after the University asked her to block the Trump administration’s Wednesday proclamation banning international students from entering the United States on Harvard-sponsored visas.
The order was issued just four hours after Harvard filed an amended complaint accusing the Trump administration of retaliating against the University by preventing incoming international students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard.
U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs also announced that the court would extend the TRO first granted to Harvard on May 23 — one day after the DHS revoked Harvard’s eligibility to host international students — until June 20, the date requested by the University. Burroughs had already agreed to extend the TRO once before, following a May 29 hearing.
Thursday’s TRO will reinstate international students’ ability to enter the country to attend Harvard until a June 16 hearing scheduled by Burroughs — but the University will need to file for a preliminary injunction to extend its ability to host international students until the court determines its legality in court.
In the amended complaint, Harvard wrote that Trump’s proclamation was “a transparent attempt to circumvent the temporary restraining order this Court already entered against the summary revocation of Harvard’s SEVP certification.”
It argued that — without urgent action — the proclamation would have dramatic costs for admitted students attempting to enter the U.S. and subject current students to fear they would be arbitrarily deported.
Burroughs, in an order published well after working hours Thursday night, deemed that Harvard had made a “sufficient showing” that it would sustain “immediate and irreparable harm” unless a TRO was granted.
But both the TRO — and a future preliminary injunction, if Harvard seeks one and Burroughs rules favorably — are only provisional protections.
CBS shows that the Yam Tits Administration still thinks getting every little thing to the Supreme Court will solve all of its problems. Melissa Quinn reports that “Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow mass layoffs at Education Department.
President Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for it to continue with its efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and lay off more than 1,300 employees while a legal fight over the future of the department moves forward.
The Justice Department is seeking the high court’s intervention in a pair of disputes brought by a group of 20 states, school districts and teachers unions, which challenge Mr. Trump’s plans to unwind the Department of Education. The president signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure to the maximum extent allowed under the law.
As part of Mr. Trump’s pledge to get rid of the department, the administration canceled a host of grants and executed a reduction in force, or a layoff, that impacted 1,378 employees — roughly a third of the department’s workforce. Affected workers were placed on administrative leave and were to receive full pay and benefits until June 9.
Mr. Trump also announced that the Small Business Administration would take over the Education Department’s student-loan portfolio, and the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special education, nutrition and other related services.
In response to the lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s actions, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the administration from carrying out its layoffs, finding that the reduction-in-force was a unilateral effort to close the department, which would violate the separation of powers.
Okay, this is an update, and I just had to put it up
Oh, speaking of those delightful Republican Congress Critters, here’s a headline for you from The Guardian. “Republican senator employs aide fired by DeSantis over neo-Nazi imagery. Nate Hochman, staffer for Eric Schmitt, also peddled far-right conspiracy theories as experts decry rise in extremism.” Gosh, another Cis White Male Christian Nationalist for Adolf! What a surprise!
A staffer for Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt was previously fired from Ron DeSantis’s unsuccessful presidential campaign after making a video containing neo-Nazi imagery, and later peddled far-right conspiracy theories in a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank.
Nate Hochman’s job in the hard-right senator’s office, along with earlier Trump appointments to executive agencies, suggest to some experts there are few barriers to far-right activists making a career in Republican party politics.
The Guardian contacted Eric Schmitt’s office for comment.
Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Guardian: “Hochman’s position shows once again that there are no guardrails against extremists in the GOP nowadays.”
She added: “Racism, antisemitism and other abhorrent beliefs don’t seem to stop extremists from appointments with far-right politicians, including in the highest office of the presidency.”
Hochman, 26, has worked for Schmitt since February, according to congressional information website LegiStorm, a development that was first noted on political newsletter Liberal Currents.
He has also posted dozens of times to X to publicize Schmitt’s initiatives, media appearances, and speeches.
The Guardian reported last September on Hochman’s previous job at America 2100, an organization founded in 2023 as a thinktank. The organization was founded by Mike Needham, who served as Marco Rubio’s chief of staff from 2018 to 2023 when Rubio was a senator and who is once again his chief of staff at the state department.
In that and subsequent reporting, it was revealed that Hochman’s work for America 2100 was focused on producing videos, some of which targeted Haitian migrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and others that rehearsed conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people and human rights organizations.
This was the latest in a string of scandals in the young operative’s political career.
In July 2023 he was fired from the presidential campaign of Florida governor Ron DeSantis after retweeting a pro-DeSantis, anti-Trump video.
As the Guardian reported, the video portrayed a “‘Wojak’ meme, a sad-looking man popular on the right, against headlines about Trump policy failures before showing the meme cheering up to headlines about DeSantis and images of the governor at work”, all to the tune of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.
Finally, it superimposed DeSantis on to ranks of marching soldiers and a Sonnenrad – a Norse symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis.
As Hochman departed the campaign, Axios reported he had made the video but endeavored to make it “appear as if it was produced externally”.
The New York Times has a Guest Op-Ed up from two law professors about how the Trump administration is giving a loyalty test to anyone looking for a job within the Federal Government. How unconstitutional is that? “How to Stack the Federal Work Force With ‘Patriotic Americans’ Who Agree With Trump.”
The White House took a step last week that significantly undercuts the idea that federal employment should be nonpartisan. A May 29 memo from the Office of Personnel Management may seem technical, but the policy that it outlines has grave implications for how the government functions and creates an unconstitutional political test for federal hiring.
At heart, the new policy is about viewpoint discrimination: People applying for federal jobs whose views the Trump administration does not like will not be hired. This is the most recent of the administration’s actions to undermine the nonpartisan Civil Service and consolidate control over almost all federal employees in the White House.
In a densely worded, 12-page memo, Vince Haley, an assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting O.P.M. director, make fealty to the president’s agenda a criterion for hiring for most federal positions. Imposing such a litmus test for nonpolitical positions runs afoul of the nearly 150-year-old federal Civil Service law, the 1939 Hatch Act and the First Amendment.
Under federal law, about 4,000 federal jobs are filled by political appointees. These positions allow the president to appoint those who share his views and to remove those who do not support his policy priorities. Most remaining federal jobs are hired based on nonpartisan and objective assessments of merit, and the hiring criteria are tied to the job duties.
The recent memo would, in effect, dramatically expand that exception for political appointees to include everyone at what’s known as level GS-5 or above — a group that includes clerical positions, technicians for soil conservation and firefighters. The ideologies and views of these individuals should play no role in their potential hiring.
The policy announced in the memo requires every person applying for a position level GS-5 or above to submit four essays. One requires that the applicant address: “How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” Another prompt: “How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic or personal experience.”
Imagine that someone applying to be a secretary or a soil technician or a firefighter were to answer with: I believe the founding principles of this country were racist and I do not adhere to them. Or: I will perform my job to the best of my abilities and will follow federal law, but I do not see my position as political in any way.
It’s hard to imagine that those people would be hired. And yet, the Civil Service was created in the 19th century precisely to avoid such politically based hiring. The prohibition on political considerations in hiring was strengthened by the Hatch Act, which was enacted at the behest of conservatives who worried that too many Democrats had been hired to staff New Deal agencies.
One more Op-Ed from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post before I close. “They are not good at this. Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.
On May 29, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a “comprehensive list of sanctuary jurisdictions.” She was “exposing these sanctuary politicians” because they are “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”
But it immediately became clear that the list of more than 500 states, counties and cities was riddled with errors: misspellings, cities and counties mistaken for each other, and places that don’t exist. Cincinnati became “Cincinnatti,” Campbell County (Kentucky) became “Cambell” County, Greeley County (Nebraska) became “Greenley” County, Takoma Park (Maryland) became “Tacoma” Park, while “Martinsville County” (Virginia) was invented. And so on.
Worse, scores of the “sanctuary politicians” she called out turned out to be leaders of MAGA counties and towns with no sanctuary policies on their books. Complaints poured in from Trump allies across the country. “You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document,” said Pat Burns, the Trump-backing mayor of the right-wing stronghold of Huntington Beach, California, mislabeled as a sanctuary city. He told the Associated Press that “somebody’s got to answer” for this “negligent” behavior.
Good luck with that. The only answer was to disappear the list this week, leaving behind a “Page Not Found” error.
Such a massive screwup hadn’t happened since … well, the previous week, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to the White House and released his ballyhooed “Make America Healthy Again” report full of citations of studies that don’t exist, the product of AI hallucinations.
This, in turn, was reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, which targeted an island full of penguins and other unpopulated or sparsely populated corners of the globe — and raised taxes on most of the world based on a math error.
And these, of course, were on top of the “mistakes” that led Trump officials to share war plans with a journalist, to deport people protected by court order, to launch a destructive fight with Harvard University, to fire and then attempt to rehire thousands of crucial federal workers, to cancel and then reinstate various vital government functions, and to misstate, often by orders of magnitude, the alleged savings from its cost-cutting attempts.
Trying to make sense of any of this? Page Not Found.
It’s obvious Trump is not interested in the best and brightest. They give him facts and truth over what he wants to hear and do, and that’s not what his massive need for attention and ego-stroking requires. Oh, up to 4000 words, and I still have managed to do something other than cover the two biggest jerks in the world jousting for air and social media time.
As you know, my Dad bombed NAZIs. I’d like to think I’d be capable of doing something brave if I were called to duty. He made it back. Many others did not. I’d just like to close with a remembrance of D-Day. There are still some D-Day vets out there who returned to the field. This is from the AP. “D-Day veterans return to Normandy to mark 81st anniversary of landings.” I remember growing up in absolute awe of all the men and women I met in my life who helped free the world of Fascists. I do not understand why the country is failing to do that now.
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.
Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.
Harold Terens, a 101-year-old U.S. veteran who last year married his 96-year-old sweetheart near the D-Day beaches, was back in Normandy.
“Freedom is everything,” he said. “I pray for freedom for the whole world. For the war to end in Ukraine, and Russia, and Sudan and Gaza. I think war is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
Terens enlisted in 1942 and shipped to Great Britain the following year, attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as their radio repair technician. On D-Day, Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle.
Let us forever be thankful for their service and sacrifice. May we also remember that we were not alone in these battles. We have allies. At least at this moment. This song by the Dropkick Murphys is about World War 1, but the sentiment is the same.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DDay #ICEKidnappings #JudgesRuleAgainstTrump #TrumpAdministrationScrewUpsAndCrimes #TurningBackTheDogeDisasters
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Finally Friday Reads: Page Not Found
“The National Divorce is a difficult time for all of us.” John Buss, repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It seems uniquely American to be focused on the drama between two rich narcissistic men when so many things are going sideways in this country and this world. It’s embarrassing and depressing.
The current zeitgeist appears to be privileged, cis white men trying to get rid of their small penis energy by displaying a hypertoxic version of masculinity. The entire White House has a Lord of the Flies vibe about it. The press has totally gotten carried away with the narcissistic displays of abuse, seemingly jolting between adolescent bouts of testosterone overdose, middle-life crises complete with bright red Teslas, and male menopause.
Meanwhile, a coterie of women display Lady Macbeth levels of ruthlessness, ambition, and descent into madness and body dysmorphia with their clownish plastic surgery. This is a mad court worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy with policies worthy of a Sinclair Lewis novel. The level of ignorance on display is beyond description. I can’t believe the news all day yesterday was obsessed with the madness of Yam Tits and Musk. Let’s focus on the damage they’ve done and leave them to their latest reality show.
I think political cartoonists have a better take on this ordeal than any media outlet. Then there’s the silent majorities in Congress, saying nothing, and doing anything but the people’s business. Not since the Iraq war have I seen more shock and awe. They governed during Watergate. Are they all afraid of the cult that serves Yam Tits? Maybe we should flood their offices with copies of the Constitution with Sharpie instructions saying DO YOUR JOB!
I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder.
Right now, I’ll start with ProPublica, which has reliably searched out stories worthy of Upton Sinclair or Nellie Bly. Once again, our own government is doing wrong by our veterans. It’s quite sad. “DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. We obtained records showing how a Department of Government Efficiency staffer with no medical experience used artificial intelligence to identify which VA contracts to kill. “AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” one expert said.” This bit of investigative journalism is by Brandon Roberts, Vernal Coleman, and Eric Umansky.
The more I know about AI, see its use, and am forced to sit in seminars to learn the Purdue way of dealing with it, the more I want to write a sci-fi book where their programs go mad. I do not trust bros with personality disorders, likely on the spectrum, to think with real human insight. It makes me long for Isaac Asimov.
As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.
The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”
The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.
The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.
VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.
We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.
ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”
Cary Coglianese, professor of law and of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, said he was troubled by the use of these general-purpose large language models, or LLMs. “I don’t think off-the-shelf LLMs have a great deal of reliability for something as complex and involved as this,” he said.
Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”
Though Lavingia has talked about his time at DOGE previously, this is the first time his work has been examined in detail and the first time he’s publicly explained his process, down to specific lines of code.
Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at ProPublica. “Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to “Munch” Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health.”
Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”
It turns out, a lot of mistakes were made as DOGE and the VA rushed to implement President Donald Trump’s February executive order mandating all of the VA’s contracts be reviewed within 30 days.
ProPublica obtained the code and prompts — the instructions given to the AI model — used to review the contracts and interviewed Lavingia and experts in both AI and government procurement. We are publishing an analysis of those prompts to help the public understand how this technology is being deployed in the federal government.
The experts found numerous and troubling flaws: the code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.
Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools. He also stressed that he knew his list of what he called “MUNCHABLE” contracts would be vetted by others before a final decision was made.
Even the word “munchable” makes these guys sound like 7th graders. I don’t even know what to say about the University of Michigan. I was a 7th grader when anti-Vietnam War protests picked up, but I don’t recall anything like this.
However, all over our institutions are in the service of racist and xenophobic Big Brother. (I really wish I could stop using references to dystopian literature, but sadly, it works.) This is from The Guardian. “University of Michigan using undercover investigators to surveil student Gaza protesters. Revealed: security trailing students on and off campus as video shows investigator faking disability when confronted.”
The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.
The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.
Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.
The undercover investigators appear to work for Detroit-based City Shield, a private security group, and some of their evidence was used by Michigan prosecutors to charge and jail students, according to a Guardian review of police records, university spending records and video collected in legal discovery. Most charges were later dropped. Public spending records from the U-M board of regents, the school’s governing body, show the university paid at least $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to City Shield’s parent company, Ameri-Shield.
Among those who say they’re being regularly followed is Katarina Keating, part of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (Safe), a local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Keating said the surveillance has caused her to feel “on edge”, and she often looks over her shoulder since November, when she was first followed.
“But on another level it sometimes feels comedic because it’s so insane that they have spent millions of dollars to hire some goons to follow campus activists around,” Keating added. “It’s just such a waste of money and time.”
How’s this for government efficiency? The NYPD and ICE mistakenly arrest a Chilean woman on vacation in New York City. Police left her 12-year-old daughter on the street alone. This country is no longer safe from arbitrary arrest and detention by morans in law enforcement.
There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government. This is reported in the Washington Post by Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance. That’s a lot of reporters for a lot of agencies. “Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people. Across the government, officials are rehiring federal workers who were forced out or encouraged to resign.” Do you suppose all the Trump/Musk drama is just a distraction from the kind of news that’s falling off the front pages but should be screamed in front-page headlines? They fucked up folks! Let’s bury the lede!
Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.
Since Musk left the White House last week, he and Trump have fallen out bitterly, sniping at each other in public over the cost of Trump’s sweeping tax legislation and government subsidies for Musk’s businesses. But even before that, the administration was working to undo some of DOGE’s highest-profile actions.
Trump officials are trying to recover not only people who were fired, but also thousands of experienced senior staffers who are opting for a voluntary exit as the administration rolls out a second resignation offer. Thousands more staff are returning in fits and starts as a conflicting patchwork of court decisions overturn some of Trump’s large-scale firings, especially his Valentine’s Day dismissal of all probationary workers, those with one or two years of government service and fewer job protections. A federal judge in April ordered the president to reinstate probationary workers dismissed from 20 federal agencies, although a few days later the Supreme Court — in a different case — halted another judge’s order to reinstate a smaller group.
Some fired federal employees, especially those at retirement age or who have since secured jobs in the private sector, are proving reluctant to return. So the administration is seeking work-arounds and stopgaps, including asking remaining staff to serve in new roles, work overtime or volunteer to fill vacancies, according to interviews with 18 federal workers across eight agencies and messages obtained by The Washington Post. A Post review found recent messy re-hirings at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, the State Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In some cases, the government is posting new online job listings very similar to positions it recently vacated, a Post review of USAJobs found
The ever-shifting personnel changes are yet another strain on a workforce already weary of Trump-induced uncertainty, said current and former employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“They wanted to show they were gutting the government, but there was no thought about what parts might be worth keeping,” said one FDA staffer who was fired and rehired. “Now it feels like it was all just a game to them.”
Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment. It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from The Harvard Crimson. “Judge Blocks Trump Proclamation Banning International Students From Entering U.S. on Harvard Visas.” I’m just seeing Trump failures everywhere. No wonder they needed a new reality show season.
A federal judge granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order hours after the University asked her to block the Trump administration’s Wednesday proclamation banning international students from entering the United States on Harvard-sponsored visas.
The order was issued just four hours after Harvard filed an amended complaint accusing the Trump administration of retaliating against the University by preventing incoming international students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard.
U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs also announced that the court would extend the TRO first granted to Harvard on May 23 — one day after the DHS revoked Harvard’s eligibility to host international students — until June 20, the date requested by the University. Burroughs had already agreed to extend the TRO once before, following a May 29 hearing.
Thursday’s TRO will reinstate international students’ ability to enter the country to attend Harvard until a June 16 hearing scheduled by Burroughs — but the University will need to file for a preliminary injunction to extend its ability to host international students until the court determines its legality in court.
In the amended complaint, Harvard wrote that Trump’s proclamation was “a transparent attempt to circumvent the temporary restraining order this Court already entered against the summary revocation of Harvard’s SEVP certification.”
It argued that — without urgent action — the proclamation would have dramatic costs for admitted students attempting to enter the U.S. and subject current students to fear they would be arbitrarily deported.
Burroughs, in an order published well after working hours Thursday night, deemed that Harvard had made a “sufficient showing” that it would sustain “immediate and irreparable harm” unless a TRO was granted.
But both the TRO — and a future preliminary injunction, if Harvard seeks one and Burroughs rules favorably — are only provisional protections.
CBS shows that the Yam Tits Administration still thinks getting every little thing to the Supreme Court will solve all of its problems. Melissa Quinn reports that “Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow mass layoffs at Education Department.
President Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for it to continue with its efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and lay off more than 1,300 employees while a legal fight over the future of the department moves forward.
The Justice Department is seeking the high court’s intervention in a pair of disputes brought by a group of 20 states, school districts and teachers unions, which challenge Mr. Trump’s plans to unwind the Department of Education. The president signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure to the maximum extent allowed under the law.
As part of Mr. Trump’s pledge to get rid of the department, the administration canceled a host of grants and executed a reduction in force, or a layoff, that impacted 1,378 employees — roughly a third of the department’s workforce. Affected workers were placed on administrative leave and were to receive full pay and benefits until June 9.
Mr. Trump also announced that the Small Business Administration would take over the Education Department’s student-loan portfolio, and the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special education, nutrition and other related services.
In response to the lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s actions, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the administration from carrying out its layoffs, finding that the reduction-in-force was a unilateral effort to close the department, which would violate the separation of powers.
Okay, this is an update, and I just had to put it up
Oh, speaking of those delightful Republican Congress Critters, here’s a headline for you from The Guardian. “Republican senator employs aide fired by DeSantis over neo-Nazi imagery. Nate Hochman, staffer for Eric Schmitt, also peddled far-right conspiracy theories as experts decry rise in extremism.” Gosh, another Cis White Male Christian Nationalist for Adolf! What a surprise!
A staffer for Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt was previously fired from Ron DeSantis’s unsuccessful presidential campaign after making a video containing neo-Nazi imagery, and later peddled far-right conspiracy theories in a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank.
Nate Hochman’s job in the hard-right senator’s office, along with earlier Trump appointments to executive agencies, suggest to some experts there are few barriers to far-right activists making a career in Republican party politics.
The Guardian contacted Eric Schmitt’s office for comment.
Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Guardian: “Hochman’s position shows once again that there are no guardrails against extremists in the GOP nowadays.”
She added: “Racism, antisemitism and other abhorrent beliefs don’t seem to stop extremists from appointments with far-right politicians, including in the highest office of the presidency.”
Hochman, 26, has worked for Schmitt since February, according to congressional information website LegiStorm, a development that was first noted on political newsletter Liberal Currents.
He has also posted dozens of times to X to publicize Schmitt’s initiatives, media appearances, and speeches.
The Guardian reported last September on Hochman’s previous job at America 2100, an organization founded in 2023 as a thinktank. The organization was founded by Mike Needham, who served as Marco Rubio’s chief of staff from 2018 to 2023 when Rubio was a senator and who is once again his chief of staff at the state department.
In that and subsequent reporting, it was revealed that Hochman’s work for America 2100 was focused on producing videos, some of which targeted Haitian migrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and others that rehearsed conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people and human rights organizations.
This was the latest in a string of scandals in the young operative’s political career.
In July 2023 he was fired from the presidential campaign of Florida governor Ron DeSantis after retweeting a pro-DeSantis, anti-Trump video.
As the Guardian reported, the video portrayed a “‘Wojak’ meme, a sad-looking man popular on the right, against headlines about Trump policy failures before showing the meme cheering up to headlines about DeSantis and images of the governor at work”, all to the tune of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.
Finally, it superimposed DeSantis on to ranks of marching soldiers and a Sonnenrad – a Norse symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis.
As Hochman departed the campaign, Axios reported he had made the video but endeavored to make it “appear as if it was produced externally”.
The New York Times has a Guest Op-Ed up from two law professors about how the Trump administration is giving a loyalty test to anyone looking for a job within the Federal Government. How unconstitutional is that? “How to Stack the Federal Work Force With ‘Patriotic Americans’ Who Agree With Trump.”
The White House took a step last week that significantly undercuts the idea that federal employment should be nonpartisan. A May 29 memo from the Office of Personnel Management may seem technical, but the policy that it outlines has grave implications for how the government functions and creates an unconstitutional political test for federal hiring.
At heart, the new policy is about viewpoint discrimination: People applying for federal jobs whose views the Trump administration does not like will not be hired. This is the most recent of the administration’s actions to undermine the nonpartisan Civil Service and consolidate control over almost all federal employees in the White House.
In a densely worded, 12-page memo, Vince Haley, an assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting O.P.M. director, make fealty to the president’s agenda a criterion for hiring for most federal positions. Imposing such a litmus test for nonpolitical positions runs afoul of the nearly 150-year-old federal Civil Service law, the 1939 Hatch Act and the First Amendment.
Under federal law, about 4,000 federal jobs are filled by political appointees. These positions allow the president to appoint those who share his views and to remove those who do not support his policy priorities. Most remaining federal jobs are hired based on nonpartisan and objective assessments of merit, and the hiring criteria are tied to the job duties.
The recent memo would, in effect, dramatically expand that exception for political appointees to include everyone at what’s known as level GS-5 or above — a group that includes clerical positions, technicians for soil conservation and firefighters. The ideologies and views of these individuals should play no role in their potential hiring.
The policy announced in the memo requires every person applying for a position level GS-5 or above to submit four essays. One requires that the applicant address: “How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” Another prompt: “How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic or personal experience.”
Imagine that someone applying to be a secretary or a soil technician or a firefighter were to answer with: I believe the founding principles of this country were racist and I do not adhere to them. Or: I will perform my job to the best of my abilities and will follow federal law, but I do not see my position as political in any way.
It’s hard to imagine that those people would be hired. And yet, the Civil Service was created in the 19th century precisely to avoid such politically based hiring. The prohibition on political considerations in hiring was strengthened by the Hatch Act, which was enacted at the behest of conservatives who worried that too many Democrats had been hired to staff New Deal agencies.
One more Op-Ed from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post before I close. “They are not good at this. Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.
On May 29, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a “comprehensive list of sanctuary jurisdictions.” She was “exposing these sanctuary politicians” because they are “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”
But it immediately became clear that the list of more than 500 states, counties and cities was riddled with errors: misspellings, cities and counties mistaken for each other, and places that don’t exist. Cincinnati became “Cincinnatti,” Campbell County (Kentucky) became “Cambell” County, Greeley County (Nebraska) became “Greenley” County, Takoma Park (Maryland) became “Tacoma” Park, while “Martinsville County” (Virginia) was invented. And so on.
Worse, scores of the “sanctuary politicians” she called out turned out to be leaders of MAGA counties and towns with no sanctuary policies on their books. Complaints poured in from Trump allies across the country. “You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document,” said Pat Burns, the Trump-backing mayor of the right-wing stronghold of Huntington Beach, California, mislabeled as a sanctuary city. He told the Associated Press that “somebody’s got to answer” for this “negligent” behavior.
Good luck with that. The only answer was to disappear the list this week, leaving behind a “Page Not Found” error.
Such a massive screwup hadn’t happened since … well, the previous week, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to the White House and released his ballyhooed “Make America Healthy Again” report full of citations of studies that don’t exist, the product of AI hallucinations.
This, in turn, was reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, which targeted an island full of penguins and other unpopulated or sparsely populated corners of the globe — and raised taxes on most of the world based on a math error.
And these, of course, were on top of the “mistakes” that led Trump officials to share war plans with a journalist, to deport people protected by court order, to launch a destructive fight with Harvard University, to fire and then attempt to rehire thousands of crucial federal workers, to cancel and then reinstate various vital government functions, and to misstate, often by orders of magnitude, the alleged savings from its cost-cutting attempts.
Trying to make sense of any of this? Page Not Found.
It’s obvious Trump is not interested in the best and brightest. They give him facts and truth over what he wants to hear and do, and that’s not what his massive need for attention and ego-stroking requires. Oh, up to 4000 words, and I still have managed to do something other than cover the two biggest jerks in the world jousting for air and social media time.
As you know, my Dad bombed NAZIs. I’d like to think I’d be capable of doing something brave if I were called to duty. He made it back. Many others did not. I’d just like to close with a remembrance of D-Day. There are still some D-Day vets out there who returned to the field. This is from the AP. “D-Day veterans return to Normandy to mark 81st anniversary of landings.” I remember growing up in absolute awe of all the men and women I met in my life who helped free the world of Fascists. I do not understand why the country is failing to do that now.
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.
Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.
Harold Terens, a 101-year-old U.S. veteran who last year married his 96-year-old sweetheart near the D-Day beaches, was back in Normandy.
“Freedom is everything,” he said. “I pray for freedom for the whole world. For the war to end in Ukraine, and Russia, and Sudan and Gaza. I think war is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
Terens enlisted in 1942 and shipped to Great Britain the following year, attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as their radio repair technician. On D-Day, Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle.
Let us forever be thankful for their service and sacrifice. May we also remember that we were not alone in these battles. We have allies. At least at this moment. This song by the Dropkick Murphys is about World War 1, but the sentiment is the same.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DDay #ICEKidnappings #JudgesRuleAgainstTrump #TrumpAdministrationScrewUpsAndCrimes #TurningBackTheDogeDisasters
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Finally Friday Reads: Page Not Found
“The National Divorce is a difficult time for all of us.” John Buss, repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It seems uniquely American to be focused on the drama between two rich narcissistic men when so many things are going sideways in this country and this world. It’s embarrassing and depressing.
The current zeitgeist appears to be privileged, cis white men trying to get rid of their small penis energy by displaying a hypertoxic version of masculinity. The entire White House has a Lord of the Flies vibe about it. The press has totally gotten carried away with the narcissistic displays of abuse, seemingly jolting between adolescent bouts of testosterone overdose, middle-life crises complete with bright red Teslas, and male menopause.
Meanwhile, a coterie of women display Lady Macbeth levels of ruthlessness, ambition, and descent into madness and body dysmorphia with their clownish plastic surgery. This is a mad court worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy with policies worthy of a Sinclair Lewis novel. The level of ignorance on display is beyond description. I can’t believe the news all day yesterday was obsessed with the madness of Yam Tits and Musk. Let’s focus on the damage they’ve done and leave them to their latest reality show.
I think political cartoonists have a better take on this ordeal than any media outlet. Then there’s the silent majorities in Congress, saying nothing, and doing anything but the people’s business. Not since the Iraq war have I seen more shock and awe. They governed during Watergate. Are they all afraid of the cult that serves Yam Tits? Maybe we should flood their offices with copies of the Constitution with Sharpie instructions saying DO YOUR JOB!
I’m sitting here wondering if I should even start in on all the mainstream media articles and coverage about Musk and Trump. Way to feed two men with obvious narcissistic personality disorder and a side of antisocial personality disorder.
Right now, I’ll start with ProPublica, which has reliably searched out stories worthy of Upton Sinclair or Nellie Bly. Once again, our own government is doing wrong by our veterans. It’s quite sad. “DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts. We obtained records showing how a Department of Government Efficiency staffer with no medical experience used artificial intelligence to identify which VA contracts to kill. “AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” one expert said.” This bit of investigative journalism is by Brandon Roberts, Vernal Coleman, and Eric Umansky.
The more I know about AI, see its use, and am forced to sit in seminars to learn the Purdue way of dealing with it, the more I want to write a sci-fi book where their programs go mad. I do not trust bros with personality disorders, likely on the spectrum, to think with real human insight. It makes me long for Isaac Asimov.
As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.
The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”
The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.
The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.
VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.
We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.
ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”
Cary Coglianese, professor of law and of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, said he was troubled by the use of these general-purpose large language models, or LLMs. “I don’t think off-the-shelf LLMs have a great deal of reliability for something as complex and involved as this,” he said.
Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”
Though Lavingia has talked about his time at DOGE previously, this is the first time his work has been examined in detail and the first time he’s publicly explained his process, down to specific lines of code.
Further technical information can be found in this follow-up article at ProPublica. “Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to “Munch” Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health.”
Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.
“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”
It turns out, a lot of mistakes were made as DOGE and the VA rushed to implement President Donald Trump’s February executive order mandating all of the VA’s contracts be reviewed within 30 days.
ProPublica obtained the code and prompts — the instructions given to the AI model — used to review the contracts and interviewed Lavingia and experts in both AI and government procurement. We are publishing an analysis of those prompts to help the public understand how this technology is being deployed in the federal government.
The experts found numerous and troubling flaws: the code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.
Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools. He also stressed that he knew his list of what he called “MUNCHABLE” contracts would be vetted by others before a final decision was made.
Even the word “munchable” makes these guys sound like 7th graders. I don’t even know what to say about the University of Michigan. I was a 7th grader when anti-Vietnam War protests picked up, but I don’t recall anything like this.
However, all over our institutions are in the service of racist and xenophobic Big Brother. (I really wish I could stop using references to dystopian literature, but sadly, it works.) This is from The Guardian. “University of Michigan using undercover investigators to surveil student Gaza protesters. Revealed: security trailing students on and off campus as video shows investigator faking disability when confronted.”
The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.
The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.
Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.
The undercover investigators appear to work for Detroit-based City Shield, a private security group, and some of their evidence was used by Michigan prosecutors to charge and jail students, according to a Guardian review of police records, university spending records and video collected in legal discovery. Most charges were later dropped. Public spending records from the U-M board of regents, the school’s governing body, show the university paid at least $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to City Shield’s parent company, Ameri-Shield.
Among those who say they’re being regularly followed is Katarina Keating, part of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (Safe), a local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Keating said the surveillance has caused her to feel “on edge”, and she often looks over her shoulder since November, when she was first followed.
“But on another level it sometimes feels comedic because it’s so insane that they have spent millions of dollars to hire some goons to follow campus activists around,” Keating added. “It’s just such a waste of money and time.”
How’s this for government efficiency? The NYPD and ICE mistakenly arrest a Chilean woman on vacation in New York City. Police left her 12-year-old daughter on the street alone. This country is no longer safe from arbitrary arrest and detention by morans in law enforcement.
There appears to be a bit of a correction of the DOGE overreach in the Federal Government. This is reported in the Washington Post by Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance. That’s a lot of reporters for a lot of agencies. “Trump administration races to fix a big mistake: DOGE fired too many people. Across the government, officials are rehiring federal workers who were forced out or encouraged to resign.” Do you suppose all the Trump/Musk drama is just a distraction from the kind of news that’s falling off the front pages but should be screamed in front-page headlines? They fucked up folks! Let’s bury the lede!
Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.
Since Musk left the White House last week, he and Trump have fallen out bitterly, sniping at each other in public over the cost of Trump’s sweeping tax legislation and government subsidies for Musk’s businesses. But even before that, the administration was working to undo some of DOGE’s highest-profile actions.
Trump officials are trying to recover not only people who were fired, but also thousands of experienced senior staffers who are opting for a voluntary exit as the administration rolls out a second resignation offer. Thousands more staff are returning in fits and starts as a conflicting patchwork of court decisions overturn some of Trump’s large-scale firings, especially his Valentine’s Day dismissal of all probationary workers, those with one or two years of government service and fewer job protections. A federal judge in April ordered the president to reinstate probationary workers dismissed from 20 federal agencies, although a few days later the Supreme Court — in a different case — halted another judge’s order to reinstate a smaller group.
Some fired federal employees, especially those at retirement age or who have since secured jobs in the private sector, are proving reluctant to return. So the administration is seeking work-arounds and stopgaps, including asking remaining staff to serve in new roles, work overtime or volunteer to fill vacancies, according to interviews with 18 federal workers across eight agencies and messages obtained by The Washington Post. A Post review found recent messy re-hirings at agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the IRS, the State Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In some cases, the government is posting new online job listings very similar to positions it recently vacated, a Post review of USAJobs found
The ever-shifting personnel changes are yet another strain on a workforce already weary of Trump-induced uncertainty, said current and former employees, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“They wanted to show they were gutting the government, but there was no thought about what parts might be worth keeping,” said one FDA staffer who was fired and rehired. “Now it feels like it was all just a game to them.”
Notice they just had to point out the Trump/Musk WWE event just to distract you for even a moment. It seems we no longer have caped crusaders but black-robed ones. This is from The Harvard Crimson. “Judge Blocks Trump Proclamation Banning International Students From Entering U.S. on Harvard Visas.” I’m just seeing Trump failures everywhere. No wonder they needed a new reality show season.
A federal judge granted Harvard’s request for a temporary restraining order hours after the University asked her to block the Trump administration’s Wednesday proclamation banning international students from entering the United States on Harvard-sponsored visas.
The order was issued just four hours after Harvard filed an amended complaint accusing the Trump administration of retaliating against the University by preventing incoming international students from entering the U.S. to attend Harvard.
U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs also announced that the court would extend the TRO first granted to Harvard on May 23 — one day after the DHS revoked Harvard’s eligibility to host international students — until June 20, the date requested by the University. Burroughs had already agreed to extend the TRO once before, following a May 29 hearing.
Thursday’s TRO will reinstate international students’ ability to enter the country to attend Harvard until a June 16 hearing scheduled by Burroughs — but the University will need to file for a preliminary injunction to extend its ability to host international students until the court determines its legality in court.
In the amended complaint, Harvard wrote that Trump’s proclamation was “a transparent attempt to circumvent the temporary restraining order this Court already entered against the summary revocation of Harvard’s SEVP certification.”
It argued that — without urgent action — the proclamation would have dramatic costs for admitted students attempting to enter the U.S. and subject current students to fear they would be arbitrarily deported.
Burroughs, in an order published well after working hours Thursday night, deemed that Harvard had made a “sufficient showing” that it would sustain “immediate and irreparable harm” unless a TRO was granted.
But both the TRO — and a future preliminary injunction, if Harvard seeks one and Burroughs rules favorably — are only provisional protections.
CBS shows that the Yam Tits Administration still thinks getting every little thing to the Supreme Court will solve all of its problems. Melissa Quinn reports that “Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow mass layoffs at Education Department.
President Trump’s administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to clear the way for it to continue with its efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and lay off more than 1,300 employees while a legal fight over the future of the department moves forward.
The Justice Department is seeking the high court’s intervention in a pair of disputes brought by a group of 20 states, school districts and teachers unions, which challenge Mr. Trump’s plans to unwind the Department of Education. The president signed an executive order in March directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the department’s closure to the maximum extent allowed under the law.
As part of Mr. Trump’s pledge to get rid of the department, the administration canceled a host of grants and executed a reduction in force, or a layoff, that impacted 1,378 employees — roughly a third of the department’s workforce. Affected workers were placed on administrative leave and were to receive full pay and benefits until June 9.
Mr. Trump also announced that the Small Business Administration would take over the Education Department’s student-loan portfolio, and the Department of Health and Human Services would handle special education, nutrition and other related services.
In response to the lawsuits challenging Mr. Trump’s actions, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked the administration from carrying out its layoffs, finding that the reduction-in-force was a unilateral effort to close the department, which would violate the separation of powers.
Okay, this is an update, and I just had to put it up
Oh, speaking of those delightful Republican Congress Critters, here’s a headline for you from The Guardian. “Republican senator employs aide fired by DeSantis over neo-Nazi imagery. Nate Hochman, staffer for Eric Schmitt, also peddled far-right conspiracy theories as experts decry rise in extremism.” Gosh, another Cis White Male Christian Nationalist for Adolf! What a surprise!
A staffer for Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt was previously fired from Ron DeSantis’s unsuccessful presidential campaign after making a video containing neo-Nazi imagery, and later peddled far-right conspiracy theories in a Marco Rubio-linked thinktank.
Nate Hochman’s job in the hard-right senator’s office, along with earlier Trump appointments to executive agencies, suggest to some experts there are few barriers to far-right activists making a career in Republican party politics.
The Guardian contacted Eric Schmitt’s office for comment.
Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told the Guardian: “Hochman’s position shows once again that there are no guardrails against extremists in the GOP nowadays.”
She added: “Racism, antisemitism and other abhorrent beliefs don’t seem to stop extremists from appointments with far-right politicians, including in the highest office of the presidency.”
Hochman, 26, has worked for Schmitt since February, according to congressional information website LegiStorm, a development that was first noted on political newsletter Liberal Currents.
He has also posted dozens of times to X to publicize Schmitt’s initiatives, media appearances, and speeches.
The Guardian reported last September on Hochman’s previous job at America 2100, an organization founded in 2023 as a thinktank. The organization was founded by Mike Needham, who served as Marco Rubio’s chief of staff from 2018 to 2023 when Rubio was a senator and who is once again his chief of staff at the state department.
In that and subsequent reporting, it was revealed that Hochman’s work for America 2100 was focused on producing videos, some of which targeted Haitian migrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, and others that rehearsed conspiracy theories about LGBTQ people and human rights organizations.
This was the latest in a string of scandals in the young operative’s political career.
In July 2023 he was fired from the presidential campaign of Florida governor Ron DeSantis after retweeting a pro-DeSantis, anti-Trump video.
As the Guardian reported, the video portrayed a “‘Wojak’ meme, a sad-looking man popular on the right, against headlines about Trump policy failures before showing the meme cheering up to headlines about DeSantis and images of the governor at work”, all to the tune of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.
Finally, it superimposed DeSantis on to ranks of marching soldiers and a Sonnenrad – a Norse symbol frequently appropriated by neo-Nazis.
As Hochman departed the campaign, Axios reported he had made the video but endeavored to make it “appear as if it was produced externally”.
The New York Times has a Guest Op-Ed up from two law professors about how the Trump administration is giving a loyalty test to anyone looking for a job within the Federal Government. How unconstitutional is that? “How to Stack the Federal Work Force With ‘Patriotic Americans’ Who Agree With Trump.”
The White House took a step last week that significantly undercuts the idea that federal employment should be nonpartisan. A May 29 memo from the Office of Personnel Management may seem technical, but the policy that it outlines has grave implications for how the government functions and creates an unconstitutional political test for federal hiring.
At heart, the new policy is about viewpoint discrimination: People applying for federal jobs whose views the Trump administration does not like will not be hired. This is the most recent of the administration’s actions to undermine the nonpartisan Civil Service and consolidate control over almost all federal employees in the White House.
In a densely worded, 12-page memo, Vince Haley, an assistant to the president for domestic policy, and Charles Ezell, the acting O.P.M. director, make fealty to the president’s agenda a criterion for hiring for most federal positions. Imposing such a litmus test for nonpolitical positions runs afoul of the nearly 150-year-old federal Civil Service law, the 1939 Hatch Act and the First Amendment.
Under federal law, about 4,000 federal jobs are filled by political appointees. These positions allow the president to appoint those who share his views and to remove those who do not support his policy priorities. Most remaining federal jobs are hired based on nonpartisan and objective assessments of merit, and the hiring criteria are tied to the job duties.
The recent memo would, in effect, dramatically expand that exception for political appointees to include everyone at what’s known as level GS-5 or above — a group that includes clerical positions, technicians for soil conservation and firefighters. The ideologies and views of these individuals should play no role in their potential hiring.
The policy announced in the memo requires every person applying for a position level GS-5 or above to submit four essays. One requires that the applicant address: “How would you help advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired.” Another prompt: “How has your commitment to the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States inspired you to pursue this role within the federal government? Provide a concrete example from professional, academic or personal experience.”
Imagine that someone applying to be a secretary or a soil technician or a firefighter were to answer with: I believe the founding principles of this country were racist and I do not adhere to them. Or: I will perform my job to the best of my abilities and will follow federal law, but I do not see my position as political in any way.
It’s hard to imagine that those people would be hired. And yet, the Civil Service was created in the 19th century precisely to avoid such politically based hiring. The prohibition on political considerations in hiring was strengthened by the Hatch Act, which was enacted at the behest of conservatives who worried that too many Democrats had been hired to staff New Deal agencies.
One more Op-Ed from Dana Milbank at the Washington Post before I close. “They are not good at this. Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.
On May 29, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem released a “comprehensive list of sanctuary jurisdictions.” She was “exposing these sanctuary politicians” because they are “endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens.”
But it immediately became clear that the list of more than 500 states, counties and cities was riddled with errors: misspellings, cities and counties mistaken for each other, and places that don’t exist. Cincinnati became “Cincinnatti,” Campbell County (Kentucky) became “Cambell” County, Greeley County (Nebraska) became “Greenley” County, Takoma Park (Maryland) became “Tacoma” Park, while “Martinsville County” (Virginia) was invented. And so on.
Worse, scores of the “sanctuary politicians” she called out turned out to be leaders of MAGA counties and towns with no sanctuary policies on their books. Complaints poured in from Trump allies across the country. “You don’t have that many mistakes on such an important federal document,” said Pat Burns, the Trump-backing mayor of the right-wing stronghold of Huntington Beach, California, mislabeled as a sanctuary city. He told the Associated Press that “somebody’s got to answer” for this “negligent” behavior.
Good luck with that. The only answer was to disappear the list this week, leaving behind a “Page Not Found” error.
Such a massive screwup hadn’t happened since … well, the previous week, when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went to the White House and released his ballyhooed “Make America Healthy Again” report full of citations of studies that don’t exist, the product of AI hallucinations.
This, in turn, was reminiscent of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff rollout, which targeted an island full of penguins and other unpopulated or sparsely populated corners of the globe — and raised taxes on most of the world based on a math error.
And these, of course, were on top of the “mistakes” that led Trump officials to share war plans with a journalist, to deport people protected by court order, to launch a destructive fight with Harvard University, to fire and then attempt to rehire thousands of crucial federal workers, to cancel and then reinstate various vital government functions, and to misstate, often by orders of magnitude, the alleged savings from its cost-cutting attempts.
Trying to make sense of any of this? Page Not Found.
It’s obvious Trump is not interested in the best and brightest. They give him facts and truth over what he wants to hear and do, and that’s not what his massive need for attention and ego-stroking requires. Oh, up to 4000 words, and I still have managed to do something other than cover the two biggest jerks in the world jousting for air and social media time.
As you know, my Dad bombed NAZIs. I’d like to think I’d be capable of doing something brave if I were called to duty. He made it back. Many others did not. I’d just like to close with a remembrance of D-Day. There are still some D-Day vets out there who returned to the field. This is from the AP. “D-Day veterans return to Normandy to mark 81st anniversary of landings.” I remember growing up in absolute awe of all the men and women I met in my life who helped free the world of Fascists. I do not understand why the country is failing to do that now.
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France (AP) — Veterans gathered Friday in Normandy to mark the 81st anniversary of the D-Day landings — a pivotal moment of World War II that eventually led to the collapse of Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Along the coastline and near the D-Day landing beaches, tens of thousands of onlookers attended the commemorations, which included parachute jumps, flyovers, remembrance ceremonies, parades, and historical reenactments.
Many were there to cheer the ever-dwindling number of surviving veterans in their late 90s and older. All remembered the thousands who died.
Harold Terens, a 101-year-old U.S. veteran who last year married his 96-year-old sweetheart near the D-Day beaches, was back in Normandy.
“Freedom is everything,” he said. “I pray for freedom for the whole world. For the war to end in Ukraine, and Russia, and Sudan and Gaza. I think war is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.”
Terens enlisted in 1942 and shipped to Great Britain the following year, attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as their radio repair technician. On D-Day, Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle.
Let us forever be thankful for their service and sacrifice. May we also remember that we were not alone in these battles. We have allies. At least at this moment. This song by the Dropkick Murphys is about World War 1, but the sentiment is the same.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
#JohnbussBskySocialJohnBuss #DDay #ICEKidnappings #JudgesRuleAgainstTrump #TrumpAdministrationScrewUpsAndCrimes #TurningBackTheDogeDisasters
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The street finds its own use for the Internet of Things
Being the further and various adventures of The Guerrilla Infrastructure Team - a renegade bunch of digital anarchists and freedom fighters who mostly just wish things were slightly better and who would stop at nothing to find convoluted technical solutions to complex social problems. Their manifesto (such as it was) had paragraphs about the correct way to drink Club Maté nestled next to opinionated screeds about the proper use of tabs in various programming languages. They weren't hired guns, nor were they available to perform at weddings, but they had the habit of showing up exactly where their curious mixture of skills would be useful. Or, at the very least, entertainingly annoying.
For the last 200 or so years, the official transcripts of the proceedings of Parliament were recorded in Hansard. The documents were a treasure-trove for infogeeks. Every word ever spoken, in either chamber, on a panoply of subjects, was there for the harvesting. Some turned it into art - carving abhorrent speeches by long-dead bigots into stone and then dumping them symbolically in the sea. Others looked for unintentional haikus among the daily exchange of barbs. One hanger-on decided to train an AI to speak like an old-fashioned politician and then got members of the public to ask it about new-fangled laws. Disraeli had strong opinions on the proposed Digital Surveillance laws!
But the GITs had higher plans. Not content to merely report on the contents of the text, they wanted to deeply understand what was going on in the Mother of Parliaments. The plan was simple - they wanted to psychologically analyse every speech, every trade of insults, every off-the cuff remark in the historical records. They built up a comprehensive psychological profile on every MP and Lord that had ever set foot in the building. The GITs weren't looking for anything in particular, they just knew that applying technology to weird niches often provided interesting results. They "borrowed" some time on a university supercomputer cluster and started mining the brains of politicians for entertaining nuggets. What they found next will shock you!
Politicians are a rowdy bunch, that much is known. But what wasn't so well understood is the predictable and seasonal variations in their behaviour. Plotting the psychological state of every member over the years revealed huge changes in attitude at specific points in the year. As the nights drew closer, there was a deterioration in behaviour. It was blindingly obvious that the majority of politicians suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder. The lack of light was detrimental to the mental health of everyone in that accursed building. Their brains were simply too addled to act in the best interest of the country.
Parliament's SCADA wasn't exactly open to the public. But if you refuse to update to the latest security patches, and use a default password, you're basically asking for people to come in and play, aren't you? Each lightbulb in the building - and there were a metric fuckton of them - was directly controllable. A determined attacker (not that the GITs thought of themselves as attackers; they were merely jesters) could control the lighting across the Parliamentary estate. The GITs could have switched off all the lights and then executed a daring raid on the building - but that felt like rather too much physical effort for too little reward. Instead, they gently changed the colour temperature and intensity of the bulbs. They were programmed to beam better quality light into the eyes of Parliamentarians as winter approached. They were curing SAD! OK, it was basically medicating people without their consent, which sounded bad, but they considered it morally justifiable.
On the way out, they updated the infrastructure and patched all the vulnerable components. A few dozen older systems were upgraded and secured, all at no cost to the taxpayer! Unbeknownst to them, that rather put a crimp in the plans of a State-Sponsored Attacker who had grand plans to flicker the lights at precise frequencies in order to trigger an epileptic fit in a prominent MP. A second attacker was also kicked out by the rogue security upgrades, which meant they were no longer able to observe the Prime Minister's movements by tracking the water use of his private toilet.
The GITs waited for winter. They carefully tracked the behaviour of the people's representatives and compared it to the baseline. There was a small but statistically significant improvement in behaviour! Oh, sure, there were a million other variables at play - but the effect was noticeable. Even the press remarked on the increase in civility over the last few months. Did peace and harmony flow as a result of the hack? No - but the mood of the chambers was improved and, with luck, that would improve the quality of debate. Sometimes all you need to do is push the needle in a positive direction.
And, if that didn't work, the GITs retained access to the HVAC system and could make truculent lawmakers shiver or sweat on command!
Every open WiFi network had become a node in a propaganda war that no one wanted.
Back when WiFi was shiny and new, an SSID wouldusually be set to something useful like "Office_W1" or informative like "Free-Cafe-Net" or vaguely funny like "Pretty_fly_for_a_wifi". Lately, as society continued its downward spiral, they had become something far more sinister. Hideous racist messages and ranting political slogans were now being broadcast from cheap MiFis hidden in train carriages. Anyone who wanted to get a little bit of email done on their journey, would suddenly be bombarded with the most vile abuse which could be fit into 32 characters.
The GITs were not amused. Half of them were catgirls within a multiracial polycule, and the other burned with righteous fury whenever their friends were attacked. This sort of aggressive enemy action demanded nothing short of a full scale retaliation - electronic warfare, covert action, and dank memes. The geeks were out for bloody revenge. There was just one slight problem; the attackers seemed to be fully distributed. Decentralised nodes of stochastic terror, with no obvious command structure, engaged in random acts of psychological violence. This epic challenge was going to require some strategic thought.
History is an excellent guide to the future. When these racist bullies first started out, they didn't have the sophistication to conduct electronic harassment or digital defacement. The only time they stopped being keyboard warriors was when they stepped away from the screens long enough to put up stickers. Instant graffiti they called it. Get a bunch of Avery labels and a cheap laser printer, and you could mass produce filth. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, whatever you wanted. An ugly little slogan scorched onto a white (naturally) sticker. They could be printed off by the hundreds and plastered all over a city in the space of an afternoon.
The thing about most bigots is - they're thick. That's not very nice, but it has the advantage of being accurate. They're just not that good at coming up with original ideas or pithy slogans. Most drones require heavy direction and that's what ended the sticker gangs. The one person bright enough to design the stickers wasn't bright enough to think about operational security. The OpSec of his followers was similarly cruddy. They'd get picked up on CCTV, traced back home, and brought in for questioning. That was enough for the police to trace back the originators of the propaganda. A few months later, the perpetrators were picking litter for community retribution, and the guy responsible was looking at a hefty gaol sentence for incitement.
So the GITs copied that playbook. The first step was getting their hands on the WiFi units which were blasting out the digital noise. This turned out to be tricky. As the sticker wars were winding down, some knobhead decided to slip a razor-blade behind a few of the slapped-on slogans. A do-gooder who tried to remove the sticker found themselves with unexpectedly perforated fingers and a nasty case of tetanus. The WiFi units were similarly rigged. The first one they found was stuck underneath seat 18 in the First Class carriage of an Intercity to Glasgow. A GIT on the train had spent an hour trying to triangulate the signal before she found it. She lay on the floor, stuck her hand under the seat, and felt around for the warm plastic box of hatred. There were no razor blades attached, no glass shards, or noxious substances. It was stuck lightly to the bottom of the seat and she pulled it away.
The battery was wired to short circuit! Magic smoke filled the carriage as the battery cells puffed up, sparks shot in every direction, just as the GIT flew through the door a jet of fire burst out of the Lithium-Ion package. Carnage, fire, poisonous air, a pissed off train company and a nervous wreck of a saboteur. In a hot moment, this had morphed from a war of words into AFK action. If the GITs were angry before, now they were fueled by rage. What kind of sick freak would want to hurt a train?! Trains are friends! Attacking a train was like punching a pony - wanton violence against an innocent creature.
A flash went around their social perimeter. Be advised: spicy pillows!
The next MiFi was treated with a little more reverence. It wasn't quite robot-bomb-disposal, but the GITs had access to enough LEGO to construct something remarkably similar! After the fourth unit was furtively removed from the toilets of a flat-roofed pub, an obvious pattern began to emerge. Every unit was identical. Once the JTAGs were soldered on and debugging instructions were transmitted, it revealed that the serial numbers were all within a tight range. These devices had obviously been purchased in bulk and then distributed to the miscreants who were sticking them up. The units looked fairly anonymous, but it didn't take much reverse image searching to discover which handful of online merchants were shipping them. The concept of GDPR is not universally understood by foreign businessmen operating out of a kiosk in Shenzhen, so it didn't take much social engineering to find the name of the person who had ordered the custom units.
A name and email address.
Decent OpSec requires a covert operative to use multiple aliases and situation specific email addresses. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with keeping yourself safe online would know to divorce your real name from your nom de guerre. It would be the height of foolishness to use your main email address for anything malicious. Chunky.Lover.1169 @ aol.uk was, I think we can all agree, a fool. But only the bastard son of the Crown Prince of Fools would use the same email address and the same bloody password for everything! Chunky's password had leaked half a dozen times as various online platforms "took his privacy very seriously". It was probably an offence for someone to try the email address and password on a number of Dark Web sites. But you can't prove the GITs did that. All you can say for certain is they "accidentally" stumbled onto his discreet Telegram channel and booted him out. The only online account of his which was left with its original password was his OnlyFans subscriptions. Hey, the workers there still needed to make money, right?
The WiFi units they'd recovered had been easy enough to crack open. The firmware was neither protected nor particularly complicated. They altered a few strings here, inserted a command-and-control backdoor there, and published an innocent looking changelog to deter anyone prying too far. The new binary was swiftly distributed to his willing acolytes. Oh, and would you mind clicking here so we can grab your IP address, geolocation, photo, and thumbprint? Did we accidentally pass them onto the police? Sowwy! KTHXBAI!
As the firmware filtered its way through the network of surreptitiously placed hotspots, the GITs built up a detailed map of where each of the little bastards was.
It was time to go war driving!
Thanks for reading
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Header image: Steely Dan circa 1972-73, clockwise from left: Denny Dias, Donald Fagen, Jim Hodder, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Walter Becker (Image source: David Erickson, Flickr CC license)
Starting as a pair of jazz snobs at Bard College in New York State, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen began an initial career as songwriters for other artists while keeping the material too idiosyncratic for anyone else for themselves. They formed Steely Dan by 1971 as a vehicle for that music that represented an amalgam of their influences; blues-rock, Sixties post-bop jazz, Latin music, and even some radio-friendly pop. But the standard band format couldn’t contain them for long.
At a certain point, touring took too much time away from what they wanted to do; focus on intricate arrangements and meticulously-rendered production. In all of its incarnations around the two principles, Steely Dan now represents a unique body of work that endures today, remaining to be the subject of polarized discussions between music fans who cite their sound in terms of both lauded praise and disdainful derision. Here are 20 examples of their finest work in all of its sardonic and jaded glory.
Fire in the Hole
In retrospect, one can hear Steely Dan finding themselves on 1972’s Can’t Buy a Thrill, sounding like nothing else at the time while producing a brace of hits in “Do it Again” and “Reelin’ in the Years”. Best capturing where they were at the time, “Fire in the Hole” is the sound of a band with an unconventional but firm direction in mind in a song about being young while feeling old, out of sorts, and out of place and time.
Donald Fagen’s barrel-rolling piano intro demands immediate attention, then accompanied by his distinctive sandpapery sneer of a lead voice. Jeff “Skunk” Baxter’s pedal steel accents and solo give this tune yet another layer of the unconventional while Fagen’s Blue Note jazz piano solo conveys sophistication matched with a brand of hip melancholy, those two ingredients being surprisingly compatible here.
Listen: Fire in the Hole
Only a Fool Would Say That
Steely Dan integrated Latin textures to jazz and rock music to seamless effect, not to mention injecting brightness and shadow in the same song. “Only a Fool Would Say That” is the best example, locking into a tasty groove as if beamed directly from the sun-washed streets of Spanish Harlem. The breezy arrangement is full of popping congas, Denny Dias’ and “Skunk” Baxter’s effervescent guitars, and Walter Becker’s subtle bass signature.
The song examines American countercultural idealism through a jaded lens. Its sublime textures belie the theme of optimism that comes to nothing, particularly applicable during the post-1960s hangover. The reality of the boy with the plan, the natural man of the beatific hippy dream, abrades against the image of the man in his brown shoes with his nine-to-five, showing that things hadn’t changed much for the person in the street as Nixon’s second term loomed.
Listen: Only a Fool Would Say That
Dirty Work
A vivid story-song, and with lead vocals from David Palmer, “Dirty Work” concerns a man entangled by a disaffected married woman, called upon to see to her while her man is out of town. Both narrator and his married lover lack the courage to face what they both know will inevitably come to no good as one clings to his infatuation while the other clings to a lifestyle she doesn’t want to sacrifice.
Accompanied by soulful organ, mellow electric piano, and a breathy horn arrangement, “Dirty Work” is a cinematically-scaled melodrama. Palmer’s pure tenor voice suggests a wide-eyed loss of innocence in the exploitative world of the wealthy, giving this song a touch of class – consciousness, that is. Palmer’s delivery makes him the obvious choice over Fagen’s musical persona who has no innocence to lose in a story like this one.
Listen: Dirty Work
Bodhisattva
A highlight of 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy, this cut’s sparse lyrics are packed with meaning in conveying the careless whims of the rich similarly outlined in “Dirty Work”. Here, Eastern centeredness meets Western materialism as an entire spiritual tradition is reduced to an affectation by a narrator uniquely positioned, economically speaking, to cast off shallow materialism for higher spiritual ideals.
The band lay down a tight and tumbling groove inside a three-line blues structure, and then careen down a corridor of jazz chords bolstered by exploratory piano and deft guitar lines. By this time, Steely Dan were still a conventional band with this song being a stalwart part of their live set. The 1974 live version recorded during a show in Santa Monica is notable for its frenzied pace, Michael McDonald’s backing vocals, and the inebriated and rambling introduction by Jerome Aniton.
Listen: Bodhisattva | Bodhisattva (live)
My Old School
Making sure that the world knew their position on nostalgia, “My Old School” is Becker and Fagen’s jaundiced and autobiographical view based on true events. It tells a tale of a drug bust at a suburban college and the resulting disappointments as one finds out who one’s real friends are during heady school days. As usual, the lyrics tell one story while the music tells another to compelling effect.
“My Old School” is Steely Dan at their most musically effusive, with celebratory soul revue-style horns as they meet with stinging rock guitar. Obliquely, “My Old School” is about the kind of heartbreak felt when people we thought we knew take up unexpected and unreconcilable positions against us. A story of betrayal never sounded so full of the lifeforce in one of the many Dan tunes that cast aspersions on provincial attitudes.
Listen: My Old School
King of the World
Steely Dan explores the end of civilization on “King of the World”, positing that the biggest hurdle beyond the basics for the last person on earth are disconnection and loneliness. With an intro that makes three notes seem portentous, “King of the World” is the sound of a man pleading for company he knows is unlikely to arrive, with any inherited kingdom in his possession being an empty prize.
Starting with Jim Hodder’s Isaac Hayes-like high-hats, later joined by Becker’s humming bassline, this cut is built on an epic scale with layered, texturally varied guitars. The airy synth solo provides a futurist vibe, the ghostly voices in the middle-eight section sounding like remnants of a world long gone. Like so many science fiction tales, this is a warning about present-day human struggles, both spiritual and political, beamed out like a one-sided message on an old Ham radio.
Listen: King of the World
Night by Night
The second track on 1974’s Pretzel Logic is a triumph of punchy horns and slinky, winding rhythms. This is the story of a down-and-out denizen of the urban underbelly hoping in vain for a way out of a world of jealousy and mayhem that’s lit up in Vegas neon. It’s a soundtrack to decadent and dangerous after-hours streets when shadowy figures come out to play.
The guitar breaks are fiery and precise, shadowed by dexterous bass guitar, and with the intricately arranged brass playing in and out of the mix. The croaking wah-wah clavinet is the engine to what sounds like the theme song to the best TV show never made. This tune captures Steely Dan at a point when the touring was about to end as they began to shed core members in favour of studio sessioners to evolve their sound.
Listen: Night by Night
Any Major Dude Will Tell You
Serving as the B-side to their “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” hit single, “Any Major Dude Will Tell You” is notable on its own for a few reasons. One of those is how lyrically upfront it is – a rarity in Steely Dan’s catalogue – even if Fagen is still singing a character. This tune finds a hipster noting the despondency in one of his compadres, then reaching out with a brand of encouragement that’s wearing shades, however genuine the advice.
The smooth sound by which they would be most identified starts here, supplemented by Chuck Rainey’s bass while official band member Denny Dias takes the guitar solo. By this time, the one-time New York-based songwriting duo who lampooned the absurdity of West Coast lifestyles had made inroads to building on what would become known as The California Sound. Irony abounds in Dan land!
Listen: Any Major Dude Will Tell You
Doctor Wu
The Katy Lied album in 1975 represented a full studio-bound focus, working with musicians who possessed the chops to contribute to whatever Becker and Fagen had in mind for each track. A highlight on that record is “Doctor Wu”, which turns down the dial on harder-edged rock in favour of a smoother, jazz-oriented arrangement. This brings a contrasting gentleness to grim themes in this character-driven song purportedly based on true events.
On a song about addiction and the hope of recovery, Fagen’s voice is as earnest as it’s possible for it to be, lit up by a pristine backdrop of bright piano, Jeff Porcaro’s melodically-supportive drums, and even a touch of wind chimes. The alto saxophone solo from sessioner Phil Woods is vibrant and optimistic with only a touch of desperation in a harrowing story about struggle, uncertainty, dependence, and disappointment.
Listen: Doctor Wu
Chain Lightning
“Chain Lightning” demonstrates Steely Dan’s love of a basic groove in an established form. This is supplemented by guitarist Rick Derringer who lays down an electrifying solo true to the song’s title. But because this is Steely Dan, this song carries the whiff of intrigue dressed up as a free and easy blues excursion in this story about infiltration and intrusion for the sheer thrill of it.
The lyrics suggest a furtive conversation between members of the criminal, cult, or celebrity-seeking variety. Any distinctions between those are notably unimportant as they devise a plan to go beyond the barricades unnoticed and into privileged territory. Feeling so good rooted in a light and breezy blues shuffle, it’s easy to miss that there is a source of menace in this tune somewhere that seems to hint at darker intentions and nefarious motives.
Listen: Chain Lightning
Any World (That I’m Welcome To)
Since “Fire in the Hole”, Steely Dan sang of outsiders, misfits, and freaks as their lyrical homebase. This is the story of someone who is not an outsider but who perhaps wishes to be, wanting to get out of their life in favour of a world just out of their imagination’s reach. In this, “Any World (That I’m Welcome To)” is less about the freedom of an imagined new life and more about being trapped in an old one that’s all too real.
Michael McDonald distinguishes himself as a backing vocalist on this, his first appearance on a Steely Dan record. The song’s shifting rhythm between 4/4 and 2/4 lends it a sense of restlessness true to its themes. It’s chord structure and melodic sense plays between rock and jazz while upcoming musicians like Joe Jackson listened with keen ears.
Listen: Any World (That I’m Welcome To)
The Royal Scam
Where they’re famous for their character-driven stories of the seedy and corrupt underbelly of American life, the title track to their 1976 record edges on involved and even outraged social commentary. The song paints a portrait of Puerto Rican immigrants seeking new lives in New York City. Instead, they find that American dreams are just as illusory as any, and without the heart to tell their families back home the sobering truth.
This is another song of danger, punctuated by growling and bestial guitar licks of an urban jungle, with a chatty and panicked muted trumpet that gives voice to the immigrants’ desperation. Donald Fagen’s delivery is without its usual detachment, joined by stalwart backing singers Sherlie Matthews, Venetta Fields, and Clydie King who make this track soar as a sympathetic chorus to enhance the drama.
Listen: The Royal Scam
Kid Charlemagne
Anti-heroes are Steely Dan’s bread and butter, with the one in this song perhaps their greatest creation. “Kid Charlemagne” is a little movie about a meteoric rise and an Icarian fall inside of five minutes. Once again, the music is ebullient and celebratory throughout the soaring highs and the inevitable lows in a story about an innovative hero celebrated in one era and then reviled as a villain in another, seemingly overnight; a beloved outlaw story, taking on mythical proportions.
True to the spirit of that, guitarist Larry Carlton lays down a part that’s now known as his greatest and most recognized instrumental contribution. The solo was a hard-won result, recorded in sections to the satisfaction of Becker and Fagen’s famous ears for precision, and characteristic of their reputations for taking persnickety, painstaking measures in the studio to serve their material.
Listen: Kid Charlemagne
Aja
By 1977’s Aja, Steely Dan reached the pinnacle of the sound for which they’d searched since the beginning. They even managed to score a few radio hits in the process. On the title track, they go beyond the hit single format and expansively stretch out, delving into fusion-inspired instrumental interplay between musicians who were at the top of their instrumental trees by 1977.
Nimble guitar lines are supplemented by mallet percussion that evokes the Chinese music heard in the banyan trees sung about in the verses. The legendary Wayne Shorter’s tenor saxophone solo provides a connection to the Sixties jazz that inspired Becker and Fagen from the start. On a song about brief contentment in a life that’s otherwise fraught, this tune is the most sophisticated on an album that proved the effectiveness of Steely Dan’s meticulous approach as record-makers.
Listen: Aja
Josie
With its labyrinthian and vaguely menacing jazz intro, “Josie” is Steely Dan’s version of a best girl in the world-style song so common in pop. In this incarnation, she’s the local girl who makes good; formidable, but also easy to love. From where is Josie returning? The fight circuit? A world tour? Prison? It doesn’t matter. She’s the pride of the neighbourhood; untouchable and unimpeachable.
Chuck Rainey’s bass shines like a beacon here, locked in with Jim Keltner’s drums for a satisfying and earthy R&B groove. True to form, the song slyly ventures into jazz in places, only to return to the slick rock beat that keeps everything grounded. This is one of Steely Dan’s most popular and most danceable hits, issued during the height of disco and capturing its Saturday night spirit without becoming just another stylistic interpretation of it.
Listen: Josie
Peg
This jubilant 1977 Steely Dan hit single hides the seediness behind the camera’s flash, its glare outstripped by the darkness between shutter falls. Fagen voices the fawning narrator, stroking his subject’s ego as he exploits her image for his own self-serving purposes. This is a thoroughly L.A. song about wide-eyed stardom-seekers and the opportunists that gravitate toward them to take what bounty they can.
Saxophonist Tom Scott’s now-iconic riff is actually played on a lyricon, the equivalent of a woodwind synthesizer that provides an essential layer of artifice. Chuck Rainy and Michael McDonald stand out again, contributing buoyant basslines and multilayered backing harmonies respectively. They’re only outdone by Jay Graydon’s slippery and fluid guitar solo, a part he earned after a six-hour session at the pleasure of Becker and Fagen, beating out seven (!) other top flight sessioners while doing so.
Listen: Peg
Babylon Sisters
A recurring theme on 1980’s Gaucho, “Babylon Sisters” is a tale of a man who goes for a cotton candy affair with a younger woman and a life of excess well past his prime against the advice of his friends. This leads to a point of no return that will cost him more than he can afford. Another chapter in the story started in hit single “Hey Nineteen”, this track is in turn a study of a generation slipping into a world no longer made for them.
The interplay between Donald Fagen’s lead and the dulcet backing vocals which include rising star Patty Austin is an irresistible highlight. The “you got to shake it, baby” section on the fade voices the struggle of the narrator as he fights against the inevitable. Incorporating a reggae pulse as it meets with Ellingtonian jazz, this is Steely Dan at their most refined and intricate.
Listen: Babylon Sisters
Cousin Dupree
After taking over a decade off, Steely Dan returned by 1993 as a live act. Toward the end of that decade, they were ready for the studio again, producing the Grammy-winning Two Against Nature in 2000. “Cousin Dupree” found that they could still write a well-crafted sleazy dude story, this one concerning a couch-riding wastrel with (very!) unwholesome designs on his attractive cousin.
For such an unsavoury story, the music is effusive and downright fun, with Walter Becker taking the bluesy and loose lead guitar parts himself. Fagen embodies the central character with a command of R&B and jazz singing that makes one forget about the song’s implications if one isn’t careful. This was their comeback single, a concentrated dose that comes complete with a truly dubious narrator that listeners would do well not to side with.
Listen: Cousin Dupree
Things I Miss the Most
On 2003’s Everything Must Go, “Things I Miss the Most” is the perfect coda to the Steely Dan catalogue. It finds a man reviewing his once privileged and indulgent life as time’s weight bears down on him. Were this any other band, it might be a straightforward song about loneliness and even regret. But with Steely Dan, one can’t help but think there’s an element of just desserts in there somewhere.
Walter Becker takes up bass duties as he’d done on their early albums, with guitars laying down melodic soul-jazz lines as horns breeze in an out. Teaming up with engineer Roger Nichols one last time, there’s a retrospective wistfulness here on this highlight from the last Steely Dan record, finding them in a looser mood while still presenting highly suspect characters as they’d done since their debut over thirty years before as they carved out their own niche.
Listen: Things I Miss the Most
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Runners up and bubbling under:
- Do it Again
- Reelin’ in the Years
- The Boston Rag
- Show Biz Kids
- Razor Boy
- Rikki Don’t Lose That Number
- Pretzel Logic
- Parker’s Band
- Black Cow
- Bad Sneakers
- Green Earrings
- Haitian Divorce
- Home at Last
- Deacon Blues
- FM
- Hey Nineteen
- Gaucho
- Here at the Western World
- Janie Runaway
- Godwhacker
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Steely Dan’s catalogue is celebrated and denigrated for all the same reasons – its sonic precision, its sardonic detachment, and its obnoxiously/impressively high levels of musicianship. That’s the thing about this band. These very same elements are the things that people love and people hate about them, depending on which side of the room one is standing. It’s extraordinary how that seems to play out.
Yet it’s this room-splitting quality that proved the validity of their path seemingly envisioned from the start to mix their influences into something unmistakable. Over a long career, it reveals that Becker and Fagen were singular musical visionaries with compelling authorial voices in both capturing and outlasting their era, going beyond the labels attached to them, and defying imitation.
Learn more about them at steelydan.com.
Enjoy!
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#20GreatSongs #70sMusic #DonaldFagen #JazzRock #softRock #SteelyDan #WalterBecker
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“Future Theory” CBG (Condensed Boston-Gig): 25-minute speed-edit of the Boston #Future_Studies session [—https://twitter.com/youtopos/status/1712484682804404634]
http://Drive.Google.com/file/d/1IuYNngbUSAspbkIW_el4PHIEDzLIA8oZ‘Theory’, from the Greek θεωρία, is derived from the Greek word θεωρός, meaning to-catch-‘sight’-of (-ωρός) a ‘view’ (θεα-); … it shares the same roots, etymologically, as the related word ‘theatre’. The latter fact is part of the reason why the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche exhorted us to “open up our theatre-eye—the great ‘third eye’ that looks out into the world through the other two” (#Morgenröte—#Dawn/#Daybreak—§507). ‘Future’ is derived from an irregular anticipatory active participle of the Latin sum—‘I am’—namely the ‘I will be’ &/or ‘I am [in the process of] ʙᴇᴄᴏᴍɪɴɢ’ that was the Latin #futūrus, the #fu of which derives from the older Greek #phúō (φύω): ‘to appear’, ‘to become’, ‘to arise’ (root of #phúsis—φύσις—the Greek word for nature from which we get our idea[s] of the physical-a.k.a-natural world). ‘Future Theory’, strictly speaking, would be a ‘catching-sight-of’ the ‘view’ which ‘arises’, ‘appears’, ‘becomes present’ (presented to us) in-&-as the ‘theatre’ of ‘nature’ (φύσις). The problem, in the words of the #phusiológoi, the ancient Greek philosopher-logicians-of-nature (or to be more precise, in the words of Heraclitus, author of the treatise entitled ’On Nature’), is that φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ: nature loves to #hide, to #conceal, to #encrypt itself. The ‘theatre’ and ‘theory’ here aren’t easy to see, to catch-sight-of: they are obscure, indeed ‘by ɴᴀᴛᴜʀᴇ’ obscured. So for all of their visual inclinations, the words ‘theory’ and ‘future’ (and the phrase ‘Future Theory’) are actually anti-apparent, anti-appearance. To enter into the theatre of theory (‘Future Theory’ more specifically: futurity being even harder to discern, since it ɪꜱɴ’ᴛ yet—i.e. since it has no ‘ʙᴇɪɴɢ’ yet) is to enter into a theatre of obscurity—what could be called ‘the fog of war’, to lift a phrase from theorists dealing with the theatre of war (the term itself is from Carl von Clausewitz) … This was also a point made by Heraclitus long ago, since he was of the opinion that the theatre-of-operations in which he, as a philosopher-of-nature, ‘operated’, was itself a theatre-of-war: war being the basis of all things, all things coming-to-be (coming into and out of existence/appearance) through struggle/strife/battle/fightⁱⁿᵍ/ᴡᴀʀ (πόλεμος). I am ‘myself’ only in-so-far and in-as-much as I fight (that is, struggle) to be who I am.
When, in his masterwork #Finnegans_Wake (the title of which is a pun on the French word ‘fin’, meaning the ‘end’, the English word ‘again’, calling-into-question definitive ‘ends’, and the idea of both waking-up to the possibility of ‘ends’ repeating again and of ꜰᴜɴᴇʀᴀʟ-ʀɪᴛᴇꜱ [‘ᴡᴀᴋᴇꜱ’] ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ being—in the endless ‘end’ again—ꜰᴜɴᴇʀᴀʟ-ʀɪᴛᴇꜱ ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴇᴠᴇʀ-ʟɪᴠɪɴɢ), … [[When, then (to start that sentence again)]] the modernist writer James Joyce joined-together the two words that most ‘struck’ the post·modernist theorist Jacques Derrida, the words ‘ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ’, (subject of a 1982 lecture by Derrida entitled ‘Two Words for Joyce’), he—Joyce—was making another pun: one that both demonstrated and enacted what could be called the Heraclitean fog-of-war, since the phrase ‘ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ’ functions in the text like ‘he was’ (hence a statement of being, or rather, of having been) while also suggesting that the person in question is at war (‘he wars’, ‘he [makes] war’), which of course would make sense as far as Heraclitus would be concerned, since for Heraclitus being ＩS war. … The phrase functions multi-linguistically [[like the title of the book, and like every phrase ɪɴ that book]] in-this-particular-case because, as Derrida pointed-out in his lecture, ‘ᴡᴀʀ’ actually means ‘ᴡᴀꜱ’ in German. War with an ʜ before the ʀ—ᴡᴀʜʀ—is the German word for truth (what is true), so ᴀʟʀᴇᴀᴅʏ what we have here with only two words (these two words: ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ), is a word-cloud: a fog-of-words. Words, like all things, are (even in their strict precision) cloudy, murky, obscure. Any sense of ‘precision’ is a mask covering-over its true/ᴡᴀʜʀᴇɴ ‘nature’, its ‘nature’ as ‘true’/ᴡᴀʜʀᴇɴ/ᴡᴀʜʀ. And its ‘truth’—“ᴛʀᴜᴛʜ”—is ᴡᴀʀ. … ‘Truth’ is always in conlict; ‘truth’ is always a conflict (always conflictual, always conflicted; any sense otherwise is merely flicker-fusion—illusion).
Mention of the post·structuralist theorist Jacques Derrida brings me to part of the readings for this session, from William Allen’s recently-published book on literary, literal and philosophical #Illegibility. On page 24 of our 26-page extracts from his book, Allen writes about the furtive—that-is-to-say evasive—quality of futurity, and quotes Derrida with regard to this very notion ... “The ‘furtive’ would thus be the dispossessing power that always hollows-out speech in the evasion of self-reference” since what we have to say about the future is, strictly speaking, kind of hollow (the future being, as yet, ‘empty’: a blank space) and in-no-actual-sense something we can truly ‘possess’. Derrida suggests that it is therefore both beyond our possession (in fact, a ‘dispossession’) and beyond the surety or security of any actual/active self-relation. It is in this way doubly ‘hollow’ (a double ‘hollowing’). “Furtiveness is a double power, and takes place through this duplicity.” The idea here is that ‘the furitive’—the furtivity of futurity in our case—is a kind of splitting, both within whatever is presently presented (the given text or context: the text-qua-context itꜱᴇʟꜰ) and, since it breaks-up and breaks-with this text-qua-context, beyond the text-qua-context. The ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ are both “hollowed-out” and start to echo. Becoming aware of this ᴇᴄʜᴏlogy is unnerving, disconcerting, and downright disorienting (‘inside’ and ‘outside’ become overlapping holes—holes with and without a ‘w’).
“The abandoning of the self [/self-reference] to ‘the furtive’ [amounts to] a delegated or deferred decision. To confirm this point,” writes Allen, Derrida moves into a discussion of Georges Bataille’s interest in ‘slipping’ or ‘sliding’- words: words that appear to ‘silence’ themselves—like the word ‘silence’ itself, which can only renounce itself in its annunciation.” The concept of the ’sliding’ or ‘slippery’ word (blatant in the case of a word like ‘silence’, but less obvious, or more subtle, when it comes to words in general), attempts to highlight the fact that ‘stability’ rather than ‘slipperiness’ is the goal—generally speaking—when it comes to language: the goal, but not necessarily the way things ᴀʀᴇ, the way ‘ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ’ here (going back to Joyce). The present (and presented) world, the present (and presented) word, [[the way we presently ‘word’ our world]] slides into the future in weird ways—‘weird’ being a word that means ‘strange’ but is actually derived from an Old English word for ‘fate’, as in ‘destiny’ or ‘destined future’ (our ‘future destination’). The poet Mallarmé—whose name literally means ‘insufficiently armed or armored’ (a soldier poorly armed for battle), just as Georges Bataille’s name means ‘war’ &/or ‘battle’: ‘bataille’—was well aware that no-matter how well-prepared one might be, no-matter how well one mitigates (i.e. lessens) the influence of chance, chance will never be abolished, and the writer (who always writes for the future, N.B) in some respects throws-down words like a gambler throws dice. … ‘A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance’—‘Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard’: this was the title of Mallarmé’s most famous poem. And as Allen explains on the next page of our readings (page 25 out of 26), Mallarmé’s method seems to have been one of being open to chance, being open to the blank unknown spaces and places. “The blank is not only the space between words, and between the text and the seemingly endless field of the page, but it is also to be found within the words themselves in their phonic or textual form as the blank empty whiteness (blancheur) of their spacing alongside the curves-and-seams of their folds—in French, their pliˢ prior to ex-plication.” By playing on (and playing with) the various possibilities of word-work in every page of his poem, Mallarmé allows both a destabilization of his text and, in addition, what Allen (via Derrida) calls the “diacritical appearance of another kind of reading: the lateral, differential ᴠᴀʀɪᴀᴛɪᴏɴ that is marked by the spacings and openings of the text. These are not variations from an established or potential ‘center’ or ‘culmination’, for (as Derrida makes clear) the poetic expanse cannot be gathered-up into a final or total meaning.” The text—heck, any text, any context—unveils itself, unfolds itself, (is unfolded) in different ways by different readers (and different readings), hence “fans out”… or, to use the French word, becomes a kind of “éventail” [[noting here that the French word for a fan, éventail, harbors in it the word event (the ᴇᴠᴇɴᴛᴜᴀʟ): the event (and eventuality) of its very ʀᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ]].
In my “Seven Prophecies of the Future” video-lecture (screened at the ꜰᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ ꜱᴛᴜᴅɪᴇꜱ ᴘʀᴏɢʀᴀᴍ installation for the 2021 #Venice_Biennale) I took Professor Mohaghegh’s key word—his key word for the Third of these Seven Prophecies being ‘ᴛᴇᴍᴘʟᴇ’—and unpacked it backward and forward, showing that the word itself, like the word for the Old Medieval ‘Soldiers of the Temple’ (the ‘Templars’), designates a site or situation of contemplation and of what the French might call ‘un temps plié’: a folded or enfolded ‘time’. The task of that talk (and of each recorded talk screened at that show) was to exemplify the given ‘key word’ with an interesting architectural, artistic and cutting-edge technological example, and my selections were the unfolding over a span of several dynasties (& about 2,000 years) of the great Egyptian temple of Luxor’s construction, the unfolding of a contortionist’s body in-&-out of a glass box for a work of performance-art, and the folding-&-unfolding of complex contemporary technologies (medical apparatuses used in surgeries, space-exploration apparatuses loaded onto rockets in compact form and then unfolded once the rockets reach orbit, et-cetera, using principles taken from the Japanese art of origami—in this case called technorigami). I mention this here, not only because it refers to notions of “fanning-out” or unfolding, but also because these “fannings” or unfoldings take place (and take time) over radically different time-spans (time-&-space-spans): 2,000 years in the case of the Temple of Luxor. ... Which leads me to the subject of ᴛɪᴍᴇ-ᴄʀʏꜱᴛᴀʟꜱ—a topic that will lead me to a point that might undo some of what I have just said (and in this way exemplify how quickly ‘what we know’ can be displaced, replaced, or erased). …
[[#ᴄᴏɴᴛɪɴᴜᴇᴅ]]
-
“Future Theory” CBG (Condensed Boston-Gig): 25-minute speed-edit of the Boston #Future_Studies session [—https://twitter.com/youtopos/status/1712484682804404634]
http://Drive.Google.com/file/d/1IuYNngbUSAspbkIW_el4PHIEDzLIA8oZ‘Theory’, from the Greek θεωρία, is derived from the Greek word θεωρός, meaning to-catch-‘sight’-of (-ωρός) a ‘view’ (θεα-); … it shares the same roots, etymologically, as the related word ‘theatre’. The latter fact is part of the reason why the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche exhorted us to “open up our theatre-eye—the great ‘third eye’ that looks out into the world through the other two” (#Morgenröte—#Dawn/#Daybreak—§507). ‘Future’ is derived from an irregular anticipatory active participle of the Latin sum—‘I am’—namely the ‘I will be’ &/or ‘I am [in the process of] ʙᴇᴄᴏᴍɪɴɢ’ that was the Latin #futūrus, the #fu of which derives from the older Greek #phúō (φύω): ‘to appear’, ‘to become’, ‘to arise’ (root of #phúsis—φύσις—the Greek word for nature from which we get our idea[s] of the physical-a.k.a-natural world). ‘Future Theory’, strictly speaking, would be a ‘catching-sight-of’ the ‘view’ which ‘arises’, ‘appears’, ‘becomes present’ (presented to us) in-&-as the ‘theatre’ of ‘nature’ (φύσις). The problem, in the words of the #phusiológoi, the ancient Greek philosopher-logicians-of-nature (or to be more precise, in the words of Heraclitus, author of the treatise entitled ’On Nature’), is that φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ: nature loves to #hide, to #conceal, to #encrypt itself. The ‘theatre’ and ‘theory’ here aren’t easy to see, to catch-sight-of: they are obscure, indeed ‘by ɴᴀᴛᴜʀᴇ’ obscured. So for all of their visual inclinations, the words ‘theory’ and ‘future’ (and the phrase ‘Future Theory’) are actually anti-apparent, anti-appearance. To enter into the theatre of theory (‘Future Theory’ more specifically: futurity being even harder to discern, since it ɪꜱɴ’ᴛ yet—i.e. since it has no ‘ʙᴇɪɴɢ’ yet) is to enter into a theatre of obscurity—what could be called ‘the fog of war’, to lift a phrase from theorists dealing with the theatre of war (the term itself is from Carl von Clausewitz) … This was also a point made by Heraclitus long ago, since he was of the opinion that the theatre-of-operations in which he, as a philosopher-of-nature, ‘operated’, was itself a theatre-of-war: war being the basis of all things, all things coming-to-be (coming into and out of existence/appearance) through struggle/strife/battle/fightⁱⁿᵍ/ᴡᴀʀ (πόλεμος). I am ‘myself’ only in-so-far and in-as-much as I fight (that is, struggle) to be who I am.
When, in his masterwork #Finnegans_Wake (the title of which is a pun on the French word ‘fin’, meaning the ‘end’, the English word ‘again’, calling-into-question definitive ‘ends’, and the idea of both waking-up to the possibility of ‘ends’ repeating again and of ꜰᴜɴᴇʀᴀʟ-ʀɪᴛᴇꜱ [‘ᴡᴀᴋᴇꜱ’] ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ being—in the endless ‘end’ again—ꜰᴜɴᴇʀᴀʟ-ʀɪᴛᴇꜱ ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴇᴠᴇʀ-ʟɪᴠɪɴɢ), … [[When, then (to start that sentence again)]] the modernist writer James Joyce joined-together the two words that most ‘struck’ the post·modernist theorist Jacques Derrida, the words ‘ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ’, (subject of a 1982 lecture by Derrida entitled ‘Two Words for Joyce’), he—Joyce—was making another pun: one that both demonstrated and enacted what could be called the Heraclitean fog-of-war, since the phrase ‘ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ’ functions in the text like ‘he was’ (hence a statement of being, or rather, of having been) while also suggesting that the person in question is at war (‘he wars’, ‘he [makes] war’), which of course would make sense as far as Heraclitus would be concerned, since for Heraclitus being ＩS war. … The phrase functions multi-linguistically [[like the title of the book, and like every phrase ɪɴ that book]] in-this-particular-case because, as Derrida pointed-out in his lecture, ‘ᴡᴀʀ’ actually means ‘ᴡᴀꜱ’ in German. War with an ʜ before the ʀ—ᴡᴀʜʀ—is the German word for truth (what is true), so ᴀʟʀᴇᴀᴅʏ what we have here with only two words (these two words: ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ), is a word-cloud: a fog-of-words. Words, like all things, are (even in their strict precision) cloudy, murky, obscure. Any sense of ‘precision’ is a mask covering-over its true/ᴡᴀʜʀᴇɴ ‘nature’, its ‘nature’ as ‘true’/ᴡᴀʜʀᴇɴ/ᴡᴀʜʀ. And its ‘truth’—“ᴛʀᴜᴛʜ”—is ᴡᴀʀ. … ‘Truth’ is always in conlict; ‘truth’ is always a conflict (always conflictual, always conflicted; any sense otherwise is merely flicker-fusion—illusion).
Mention of the post·structuralist theorist Jacques Derrida brings me to part of the readings for this session, from William Allen’s recently-published book on literary, literal and philosophical #Illegibility. On page 24 of our 26-page extracts from his book, Allen writes about the furtive—that-is-to-say evasive—quality of futurity, and quotes Derrida with regard to this very notion ... “The ‘furtive’ would thus be the dispossessing power that always hollows-out speech in the evasion of self-reference” since what we have to say about the future is, strictly speaking, kind of hollow (the future being, as yet, ‘empty’: a blank space) and in-no-actual-sense something we can truly ‘possess’. Derrida suggests that it is therefore both beyond our possession (in fact, a ‘dispossession’) and beyond the surety or security of any actual/active self-relation. It is in this way doubly ‘hollow’ (a double ‘hollowing’). “Furtiveness is a double power, and takes place through this duplicity.” The idea here is that ‘the furitive’—the furtivity of futurity in our case—is a kind of splitting, both within whatever is presently presented (the given text or context: the text-qua-context itꜱᴇʟꜰ) and, since it breaks-up and breaks-with this text-qua-context, beyond the text-qua-context. The ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ are both “hollowed-out” and start to echo. Becoming aware of this ᴇᴄʜᴏlogy is unnerving, disconcerting, and downright disorienting (‘inside’ and ‘outside’ become overlapping holes—holes with and without a ‘w’).
“The abandoning of the self [/self-reference] to ‘the furtive’ [amounts to] a delegated or deferred decision. To confirm this point,” writes Allen, Derrida moves into a discussion of Georges Bataille’s interest in ‘slipping’ or ‘sliding’- words: words that appear to ‘silence’ themselves—like the word ‘silence’ itself, which can only renounce itself in its annunciation.” The concept of the ’sliding’ or ‘slippery’ word (blatant in the case of a word like ‘silence’, but less obvious, or more subtle, when it comes to words in general), attempts to highlight the fact that ‘stability’ rather than ‘slipperiness’ is the goal—generally speaking—when it comes to language: the goal, but not necessarily the way things ᴀʀᴇ, the way ‘ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ’ here (going back to Joyce). The present (and presented) world, the present (and presented) word, [[the way we presently ‘word’ our world]] slides into the future in weird ways—‘weird’ being a word that means ‘strange’ but is actually derived from an Old English word for ‘fate’, as in ‘destiny’ or ‘destined future’ (our ‘future destination’). The poet Mallarmé—whose name literally means ‘insufficiently armed or armored’ (a soldier poorly armed for battle), just as Georges Bataille’s name means ‘war’ &/or ‘battle’: ‘bataille’—was well aware that no-matter how well-prepared one might be, no-matter how well one mitigates (i.e. lessens) the influence of chance, chance will never be abolished, and the writer (who always writes for the future, N.B) in some respects throws-down words like a gambler throws dice. … ‘A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance’—‘Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard’: this was the title of Mallarmé’s most famous poem. And as Allen explains on the next page of our readings (page 25 out of 26), Mallarmé’s method seems to have been one of being open to chance, being open to the blank unknown spaces and places. “The blank is not only the space between words, and between the text and the seemingly endless field of the page, but it is also to be found within the words themselves in their phonic or textual form as the blank empty whiteness (blancheur) of their spacing alongside the curves-and-seams of their folds—in French, their pliˢ prior to ex-plication.” By playing on (and playing with) the various possibilities of word-work in every page of his poem, Mallarmé allows both a destabilization of his text and, in addition, what Allen (via Derrida) calls the “diacritical appearance of another kind of reading: the lateral, differential ᴠᴀʀɪᴀᴛɪᴏɴ that is marked by the spacings and openings of the text. These are not variations from an established or potential ‘center’ or ‘culmination’, for (as Derrida makes clear) the poetic expanse cannot be gathered-up into a final or total meaning.” The text—heck, any text, any context—unveils itself, unfolds itself, (is unfolded) in different ways by different readers (and different readings), hence “fans out”… or, to use the French word, becomes a kind of “éventail” [[noting here that the French word for a fan, éventail, harbors in it the word event (the ᴇᴠᴇɴᴛᴜᴀʟ): the event (and eventuality) of its very ʀᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ]].
In my “Seven Prophecies of the Future” video-lecture (screened at the ꜰᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ ꜱᴛᴜᴅɪᴇꜱ ᴘʀᴏɢʀᴀᴍ installation for the 2021 #Venice_Biennale) I took Professor Mohaghegh’s key word—his key word for the Third of these Seven Prophecies being ‘ᴛᴇᴍᴘʟᴇ’—and unpacked it backward and forward, showing that the word itself, like the word for the Old Medieval ‘Soldiers of the Temple’ (the ‘Templars’), designates a site or situation of contemplation and of what the French might call ‘un temps plié’: a folded or enfolded ‘time’. The task of that talk (and of each recorded talk screened at that show) was to exemplify the given ‘key word’ with an interesting architectural, artistic and cutting-edge technological example, and my selections were the unfolding over a span of several dynasties (& about 2,000 years) of the great Egyptian temple of Luxor’s construction, the unfolding of a contortionist’s body in-&-out of a glass box for a work of performance-art, and the folding-&-unfolding of complex contemporary technologies (medical apparatuses used in surgeries, space-exploration apparatuses loaded onto rockets in compact form and then unfolded once the rockets reach orbit, et-cetera, using principles taken from the Japanese art of origami—in this case called technorigami). I mention this here, not only because it refers to notions of “fanning-out” or unfolding, but also because these “fannings” or unfoldings take place (and take time) over radically different time-spans (time-&-space-spans): 2,000 years in the case of the Temple of Luxor. ... Which leads me to the subject of ᴛɪᴍᴇ-ᴄʀʏꜱᴛᴀʟꜱ—a topic that will lead me to a point that might undo some of what I have just said (and in this way exemplify how quickly ‘what we know’ can be displaced, replaced, or erased). …
[[#ᴄᴏɴᴛɪɴᴜᴇᴅ]]
-
“Future Theory” CBG (Condensed Boston-Gig): 25-minute speed-edit of the Boston #Future_Studies session [—https://twitter.com/youtopos/status/1712484682804404634]
http://Drive.Google.com/file/d/1IuYNngbUSAspbkIW_el4PHIEDzLIA8oZ‘Theory’, from the Greek θεωρία, is derived from the Greek word θεωρός, meaning to-catch-‘sight’-of (-ωρός) a ‘view’ (θεα-); … it shares the same roots, etymologically, as the related word ‘theatre’. The latter fact is part of the reason why the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche exhorted us to “open up our theatre-eye—the great ‘third eye’ that looks out into the world through the other two” (#Morgenröte—#Dawn/#Daybreak—§507). ‘Future’ is derived from an irregular anticipatory active participle of the Latin sum—‘I am’—namely the ‘I will be’ &/or ‘I am [in the process of] ʙᴇᴄᴏᴍɪɴɢ’ that was the Latin #futūrus, the #fu of which derives from the older Greek #phúō (φύω): ‘to appear’, ‘to become’, ‘to arise’ (root of #phúsis—φύσις—the Greek word for nature from which we get our idea[s] of the physical-a.k.a-natural world). ‘Future Theory’, strictly speaking, would be a ‘catching-sight-of’ the ‘view’ which ‘arises’, ‘appears’, ‘becomes present’ (presented to us) in-&-as the ‘theatre’ of ‘nature’ (φύσις). The problem, in the words of the #phusiológoi, the ancient Greek philosopher-logicians-of-nature (or to be more precise, in the words of Heraclitus, author of the treatise entitled ’On Nature’), is that φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ: nature loves to #hide, to #conceal, to #encrypt itself. The ‘theatre’ and ‘theory’ here aren’t easy to see, to catch-sight-of: they are obscure, indeed ‘by ɴᴀᴛᴜʀᴇ’ obscured. So for all of their visual inclinations, the words ‘theory’ and ‘future’ (and the phrase ‘Future Theory’) are actually anti-apparent, anti-appearance. To enter into the theatre of theory (‘Future Theory’ more specifically: futurity being even harder to discern, since it ɪꜱɴ’ᴛ yet—i.e. since it has no ‘ʙᴇɪɴɢ’ yet) is to enter into a theatre of obscurity—what could be called ‘the fog of war’, to lift a phrase from theorists dealing with the theatre of war (the term itself is from Carl von Clausewitz) … This was also a point made by Heraclitus long ago, since he was of the opinion that the theatre-of-operations in which he, as a philosopher-of-nature, ‘operated’, was itself a theatre-of-war: war being the basis of all things, all things coming-to-be (coming into and out of existence/appearance) through struggle/strife/battle/fightⁱⁿᵍ/ᴡᴀʀ (πόλεμος). I am ‘myself’ only in-so-far and in-as-much as I fight (that is, struggle) to be who I am.
When, in his masterwork #Finnegans_Wake (the title of which is a pun on the French word ‘fin’, meaning the ‘end’, the English word ‘again’, calling-into-question definitive ‘ends’, and the idea of both waking-up to the possibility of ‘ends’ repeating again and of ꜰᴜɴᴇʀᴀʟ-ʀɪᴛᴇꜱ [‘ᴡᴀᴋᴇꜱ’] ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ being—in the endless ‘end’ again—ꜰᴜɴᴇʀᴀʟ-ʀɪᴛᴇꜱ ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴇᴠᴇʀ-ʟɪᴠɪɴɢ), … [[When, then (to start that sentence again)]] the modernist writer James Joyce joined-together the two words that most ‘struck’ the post·modernist theorist Jacques Derrida, the words ‘ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ’, (subject of a 1982 lecture by Derrida entitled ‘Two Words for Joyce’), he—Joyce—was making another pun: one that both demonstrated and enacted what could be called the Heraclitean fog-of-war, since the phrase ‘ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ’ functions in the text like ‘he was’ (hence a statement of being, or rather, of having been) while also suggesting that the person in question is at war (‘he wars’, ‘he [makes] war’), which of course would make sense as far as Heraclitus would be concerned, since for Heraclitus being ＩS war. … The phrase functions multi-linguistically [[like the title of the book, and like every phrase ɪɴ that book]] in-this-particular-case because, as Derrida pointed-out in his lecture, ‘ᴡᴀʀ’ actually means ‘ᴡᴀꜱ’ in German. War with an ʜ before the ʀ—ᴡᴀʜʀ—is the German word for truth (what is true), so ᴀʟʀᴇᴀᴅʏ what we have here with only two words (these two words: ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ), is a word-cloud: a fog-of-words. Words, like all things, are (even in their strict precision) cloudy, murky, obscure. Any sense of ‘precision’ is a mask covering-over its true/ᴡᴀʜʀᴇɴ ‘nature’, its ‘nature’ as ‘true’/ᴡᴀʜʀᴇɴ/ᴡᴀʜʀ. And its ‘truth’—“ᴛʀᴜᴛʜ”—is ᴡᴀʀ. … ‘Truth’ is always in conlict; ‘truth’ is always a conflict (always conflictual, always conflicted; any sense otherwise is merely flicker-fusion—illusion).
Mention of the post·structuralist theorist Jacques Derrida brings me to part of the readings for this session, from William Allen’s recently-published book on literary, literal and philosophical #Illegibility. On page 24 of our 26-page extracts from his book, Allen writes about the furtive—that-is-to-say evasive—quality of futurity, and quotes Derrida with regard to this very notion ... “The ‘furtive’ would thus be the dispossessing power that always hollows-out speech in the evasion of self-reference” since what we have to say about the future is, strictly speaking, kind of hollow (the future being, as yet, ‘empty’: a blank space) and in-no-actual-sense something we can truly ‘possess’. Derrida suggests that it is therefore both beyond our possession (in fact, a ‘dispossession’) and beyond the surety or security of any actual/active self-relation. It is in this way doubly ‘hollow’ (a double ‘hollowing’). “Furtiveness is a double power, and takes place through this duplicity.” The idea here is that ‘the furitive’—the furtivity of futurity in our case—is a kind of splitting, both within whatever is presently presented (the given text or context: the text-qua-context itꜱᴇʟꜰ) and, since it breaks-up and breaks-with this text-qua-context, beyond the text-qua-context. The ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ are both “hollowed-out” and start to echo. Becoming aware of this ᴇᴄʜᴏlogy is unnerving, disconcerting, and downright disorienting (‘inside’ and ‘outside’ become overlapping holes—holes with and without a ‘w’).
“The abandoning of the self [/self-reference] to ‘the furtive’ [amounts to] a delegated or deferred decision. To confirm this point,” writes Allen, Derrida moves into a discussion of Georges Bataille’s interest in ‘slipping’ or ‘sliding’- words: words that appear to ‘silence’ themselves—like the word ‘silence’ itself, which can only renounce itself in its annunciation.” The concept of the ’sliding’ or ‘slippery’ word (blatant in the case of a word like ‘silence’, but less obvious, or more subtle, when it comes to words in general), attempts to highlight the fact that ‘stability’ rather than ‘slipperiness’ is the goal—generally speaking—when it comes to language: the goal, but not necessarily the way things ᴀʀᴇ, the way ‘ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ’ here (going back to Joyce). The present (and presented) world, the present (and presented) word, [[the way we presently ‘word’ our world]] slides into the future in weird ways—‘weird’ being a word that means ‘strange’ but is actually derived from an Old English word for ‘fate’, as in ‘destiny’ or ‘destined future’ (our ‘future destination’). The poet Mallarmé—whose name literally means ‘insufficiently armed or armored’ (a soldier poorly armed for battle), just as Georges Bataille’s name means ‘war’ &/or ‘battle’: ‘bataille’—was well aware that no-matter how well-prepared one might be, no-matter how well one mitigates (i.e. lessens) the influence of chance, chance will never be abolished, and the writer (who always writes for the future, N.B) in some respects throws-down words like a gambler throws dice. … ‘A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance’—‘Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard’: this was the title of Mallarmé’s most famous poem. And as Allen explains on the next page of our readings (page 25 out of 26), Mallarmé’s method seems to have been one of being open to chance, being open to the blank unknown spaces and places. “The blank is not only the space between words, and between the text and the seemingly endless field of the page, but it is also to be found within the words themselves in their phonic or textual form as the blank empty whiteness (blancheur) of their spacing alongside the curves-and-seams of their folds—in French, their pliˢ prior to ex-plication.” By playing on (and playing with) the various possibilities of word-work in every page of his poem, Mallarmé allows both a destabilization of his text and, in addition, what Allen (via Derrida) calls the “diacritical appearance of another kind of reading: the lateral, differential ᴠᴀʀɪᴀᴛɪᴏɴ that is marked by the spacings and openings of the text. These are not variations from an established or potential ‘center’ or ‘culmination’, for (as Derrida makes clear) the poetic expanse cannot be gathered-up into a final or total meaning.” The text—heck, any text, any context—unveils itself, unfolds itself, (is unfolded) in different ways by different readers (and different readings), hence “fans out”… or, to use the French word, becomes a kind of “éventail” [[noting here that the French word for a fan, éventail, harbors in it the word event (the ᴇᴠᴇɴᴛᴜᴀʟ): the event (and eventuality) of its very ʀᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ]].
In my “Seven Prophecies of the Future” video-lecture (screened at the ꜰᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ ꜱᴛᴜᴅɪᴇꜱ ᴘʀᴏɢʀᴀᴍ installation for the 2021 #Venice_Biennale) I took Professor Mohaghegh’s key word—his key word for the Third of these Seven Prophecies being ‘ᴛᴇᴍᴘʟᴇ’—and unpacked it backward and forward, showing that the word itself, like the word for the Old Medieval ‘Soldiers of the Temple’ (the ‘Templars’), designates a site or situation of contemplation and of what the French might call ‘un temps plié’: a folded or enfolded ‘time’. The task of that talk (and of each recorded talk screened at that show) was to exemplify the given ‘key word’ with an interesting architectural, artistic and cutting-edge technological example, and my selections were the unfolding over a span of several dynasties (& about 2,000 years) of the great Egyptian temple of Luxor’s construction, the unfolding of a contortionist’s body in-&-out of a glass box for a work of performance-art, and the folding-&-unfolding of complex contemporary technologies (medical apparatuses used in surgeries, space-exploration apparatuses loaded onto rockets in compact form and then unfolded once the rockets reach orbit, et-cetera, using principles taken from the Japanese art of origami—in this case called technorigami). I mention this here, not only because it refers to notions of “fanning-out” or unfolding, but also because these “fannings” or unfoldings take place (and take time) over radically different time-spans (time-&-space-spans): 2,000 years in the case of the Temple of Luxor. ... Which leads me to the subject of ᴛɪᴍᴇ-ᴄʀʏꜱᴛᴀʟꜱ—a topic that will lead me to a point that might undo some of what I have just said (and in this way exemplify how quickly ‘what we know’ can be displaced, replaced, or erased). …
[[#ᴄᴏɴᴛɪɴᴜᴇᴅ]]
-
“Future Theory” CBG (Condensed Boston-Gig): 25-minute speed-edit of the Boston #Future_Studies session [—https://twitter.com/youtopos/status/1712484682804404634]
http://Drive.Google.com/file/d/1IuYNngbUSAspbkIW_el4PHIEDzLIA8oZ‘Theory’, from the Greek θεωρία, is derived from the Greek word θεωρός, meaning to-catch-‘sight’-of (-ωρός) a ‘view’ (θεα-); … it shares the same roots, etymologically, as the related word ‘theatre’. The latter fact is part of the reason why the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche exhorted us to “open up our theatre-eye—the great ‘third eye’ that looks out into the world through the other two” (#Morgenröte—#Dawn/#Daybreak—§507). ‘Future’ is derived from an irregular anticipatory active participle of the Latin sum—‘I am’—namely the ‘I will be’ &/or ‘I am [in the process of] ʙᴇᴄᴏᴍɪɴɢ’ that was the Latin #futūrus, the #fu of which derives from the older Greek #phúō (φύω): ‘to appear’, ‘to become’, ‘to arise’ (root of #phúsis—φύσις—the Greek word for nature from which we get our idea[s] of the physical-a.k.a-natural world). ‘Future Theory’, strictly speaking, would be a ‘catching-sight-of’ the ‘view’ which ‘arises’, ‘appears’, ‘becomes present’ (presented to us) in-&-as the ‘theatre’ of ‘nature’ (φύσις). The problem, in the words of the #phusiológoi, the ancient Greek philosopher-logicians-of-nature (or to be more precise, in the words of Heraclitus, author of the treatise entitled ’On Nature’), is that φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ: nature loves to #hide, to #conceal, to #encrypt itself. The ‘theatre’ and ‘theory’ here aren’t easy to see, to catch-sight-of: they are obscure, indeed ‘by ɴᴀᴛᴜʀᴇ’ obscured. So for all of their visual inclinations, the words ‘theory’ and ‘future’ (and the phrase ‘Future Theory’) are actually anti-apparent, anti-appearance. To enter into the theatre of theory (‘Future Theory’ more specifically: futurity being even harder to discern, since it ɪꜱɴ’ᴛ yet—i.e. since it has no ‘ʙᴇɪɴɢ’ yet) is to enter into a theatre of obscurity—what could be called ‘the fog of war’, to lift a phrase from theorists dealing with the theatre of war (the term itself is from Carl von Clausewitz) … This was also a point made by Heraclitus long ago, since he was of the opinion that the theatre-of-operations in which he, as a philosopher-of-nature, ‘operated’, was itself a theatre-of-war: war being the basis of all things, all things coming-to-be (coming into and out of existence/appearance) through struggle/strife/battle/fightⁱⁿᵍ/ᴡᴀʀ (πόλεμος). I am ‘myself’ only in-so-far and in-as-much as I fight (that is, struggle) to be who I am.
When, in his masterwork #Finnegans_Wake (the title of which is a pun on the French word ‘fin’, meaning the ‘end’, the English word ‘again’, calling-into-question definitive ‘ends’, and the idea of both waking-up to the possibility of ‘ends’ repeating again and of ꜰᴜɴᴇʀᴀʟ-ʀɪᴛᴇꜱ [‘ᴡᴀᴋᴇꜱ’] ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ being—in the endless ‘end’ again—ꜰᴜɴᴇʀᴀʟ-ʀɪᴛᴇꜱ ꜰᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴇᴠᴇʀ-ʟɪᴠɪɴɢ), … [[When, then (to start that sentence again)]] the modernist writer James Joyce joined-together the two words that most ‘struck’ the post·modernist theorist Jacques Derrida, the words ‘ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ’, (subject of a 1982 lecture by Derrida entitled ‘Two Words for Joyce’), he—Joyce—was making another pun: one that both demonstrated and enacted what could be called the Heraclitean fog-of-war, since the phrase ‘ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ’ functions in the text like ‘he was’ (hence a statement of being, or rather, of having been) while also suggesting that the person in question is at war (‘he wars’, ‘he [makes] war’), which of course would make sense as far as Heraclitus would be concerned, since for Heraclitus being ＩS war. … The phrase functions multi-linguistically [[like the title of the book, and like every phrase ɪɴ that book]] in-this-particular-case because, as Derrida pointed-out in his lecture, ‘ᴡᴀʀ’ actually means ‘ᴡᴀꜱ’ in German. War with an ʜ before the ʀ—ᴡᴀʜʀ—is the German word for truth (what is true), so ᴀʟʀᴇᴀᴅʏ what we have here with only two words (these two words: ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ), is a word-cloud: a fog-of-words. Words, like all things, are (even in their strict precision) cloudy, murky, obscure. Any sense of ‘precision’ is a mask covering-over its true/ᴡᴀʜʀᴇɴ ‘nature’, its ‘nature’ as ‘true’/ᴡᴀʜʀᴇɴ/ᴡᴀʜʀ. And its ‘truth’—“ᴛʀᴜᴛʜ”—is ᴡᴀʀ. … ‘Truth’ is always in conlict; ‘truth’ is always a conflict (always conflictual, always conflicted; any sense otherwise is merely flicker-fusion—illusion).
Mention of the post·structuralist theorist Jacques Derrida brings me to part of the readings for this session, from William Allen’s recently-published book on literary, literal and philosophical #Illegibility. On page 24 of our 26-page extracts from his book, Allen writes about the furtive—that-is-to-say evasive—quality of futurity, and quotes Derrida with regard to this very notion ... “The ‘furtive’ would thus be the dispossessing power that always hollows-out speech in the evasion of self-reference” since what we have to say about the future is, strictly speaking, kind of hollow (the future being, as yet, ‘empty’: a blank space) and in-no-actual-sense something we can truly ‘possess’. Derrida suggests that it is therefore both beyond our possession (in fact, a ‘dispossession’) and beyond the surety or security of any actual/active self-relation. It is in this way doubly ‘hollow’ (a double ‘hollowing’). “Furtiveness is a double power, and takes place through this duplicity.” The idea here is that ‘the furitive’—the furtivity of futurity in our case—is a kind of splitting, both within whatever is presently presented (the given text or context: the text-qua-context itꜱᴇʟꜰ) and, since it breaks-up and breaks-with this text-qua-context, beyond the text-qua-context. The ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ are both “hollowed-out” and start to echo. Becoming aware of this ᴇᴄʜᴏlogy is unnerving, disconcerting, and downright disorienting (‘inside’ and ‘outside’ become overlapping holes—holes with and without a ‘w’).
“The abandoning of the self [/self-reference] to ‘the furtive’ [amounts to] a delegated or deferred decision. To confirm this point,” writes Allen, Derrida moves into a discussion of Georges Bataille’s interest in ‘slipping’ or ‘sliding’- words: words that appear to ‘silence’ themselves—like the word ‘silence’ itself, which can only renounce itself in its annunciation.” The concept of the ’sliding’ or ‘slippery’ word (blatant in the case of a word like ‘silence’, but less obvious, or more subtle, when it comes to words in general), attempts to highlight the fact that ‘stability’ rather than ‘slipperiness’ is the goal—generally speaking—when it comes to language: the goal, but not necessarily the way things ᴀʀᴇ, the way ‘ʜᴇ ᴡᴀʀ’ here (going back to Joyce). The present (and presented) world, the present (and presented) word, [[the way we presently ‘word’ our world]] slides into the future in weird ways—‘weird’ being a word that means ‘strange’ but is actually derived from an Old English word for ‘fate’, as in ‘destiny’ or ‘destined future’ (our ‘future destination’). The poet Mallarmé—whose name literally means ‘insufficiently armed or armored’ (a soldier poorly armed for battle), just as Georges Bataille’s name means ‘war’ &/or ‘battle’: ‘bataille’—was well aware that no-matter how well-prepared one might be, no-matter how well one mitigates (i.e. lessens) the influence of chance, chance will never be abolished, and the writer (who always writes for the future, N.B) in some respects throws-down words like a gambler throws dice. … ‘A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance’—‘Un Coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard’: this was the title of Mallarmé’s most famous poem. And as Allen explains on the next page of our readings (page 25 out of 26), Mallarmé’s method seems to have been one of being open to chance, being open to the blank unknown spaces and places. “The blank is not only the space between words, and between the text and the seemingly endless field of the page, but it is also to be found within the words themselves in their phonic or textual form as the blank empty whiteness (blancheur) of their spacing alongside the curves-and-seams of their folds—in French, their pliˢ prior to ex-plication.” By playing on (and playing with) the various possibilities of word-work in every page of his poem, Mallarmé allows both a destabilization of his text and, in addition, what Allen (via Derrida) calls the “diacritical appearance of another kind of reading: the lateral, differential ᴠᴀʀɪᴀᴛɪᴏɴ that is marked by the spacings and openings of the text. These are not variations from an established or potential ‘center’ or ‘culmination’, for (as Derrida makes clear) the poetic expanse cannot be gathered-up into a final or total meaning.” The text—heck, any text, any context—unveils itself, unfolds itself, (is unfolded) in different ways by different readers (and different readings), hence “fans out”… or, to use the French word, becomes a kind of “éventail” [[noting here that the French word for a fan, éventail, harbors in it the word event (the ᴇᴠᴇɴᴛᴜᴀʟ): the event (and eventuality) of its very ʀᴇᴀᴅɪɴɢ]].
In my “Seven Prophecies of the Future” video-lecture (screened at the ꜰᴜᴛᴜʀᴇ ꜱᴛᴜᴅɪᴇꜱ ᴘʀᴏɢʀᴀᴍ installation for the 2021 #Venice_Biennale) I took Professor Mohaghegh’s key word—his key word for the Third of these Seven Prophecies being ‘ᴛᴇᴍᴘʟᴇ’—and unpacked it backward and forward, showing that the word itself, like the word for the Old Medieval ‘Soldiers of the Temple’ (the ‘Templars’), designates a site or situation of contemplation and of what the French might call ‘un temps plié’: a folded or enfolded ‘time’. The task of that talk (and of each recorded talk screened at that show) was to exemplify the given ‘key word’ with an interesting architectural, artistic and cutting-edge technological example, and my selections were the unfolding over a span of several dynasties (& about 2,000 years) of the great Egyptian temple of Luxor’s construction, the unfolding of a contortionist’s body in-&-out of a glass box for a work of performance-art, and the folding-&-unfolding of complex contemporary technologies (medical apparatuses used in surgeries, space-exploration apparatuses loaded onto rockets in compact form and then unfolded once the rockets reach orbit, et-cetera, using principles taken from the Japanese art of origami—in this case called technorigami). I mention this here, not only because it refers to notions of “fanning-out” or unfolding, but also because these “fannings” or unfoldings take place (and take time) over radically different time-spans (time-&-space-spans): 2,000 years in the case of the Temple of Luxor. ... Which leads me to the subject of ᴛɪᴍᴇ-ᴄʀʏꜱᴛᴀʟꜱ—a topic that will lead me to a point that might undo some of what I have just said (and in this way exemplify how quickly ‘what we know’ can be displaced, replaced, or erased). …
[[#ᴄᴏɴᴛɪɴᴜᴇᴅ]]