sunsquatchboy

Latest Posts by sunsquatchboy

TALKING HEADS - TAKE ME TO RIVER.

47 years ago today,

One particular and climactic highlight of 'Stop making Sense' came when the band took Al Green’s TAKE ME TO THE RIVER farther and deeper than ever imaginable – first an enormous boom-boom from Chris Frantz, then the doubled bass (Busta Jones and Tina) making the earth move, next the Baptist choir chanting of the title by Nona Hendryx and Dolette McDonald (the crowd was roaring), and finally "I don't know why I love you like I do."

The fact that this is 80 fucking years ago but still just as relevant is terrifying.

“Nothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.

The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.

There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do – to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world – is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.

The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe – the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry – before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative. China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions.

At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional – the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be … atmospheric.

At some point someone – a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin – will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there.

The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him. Or they might issue a ruling, and find it has no effect – that the administration has called the basic bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in the crunch, people in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments the courts, the same as everyone else. Then everyone will take their cue. Executives will line up to court him. Media organizations, the large ones anyway, will find reasons to be cheerful.

Of course, in reality things will start to fall apart fairly quickly. The huge across-the-board tariffs he imposes will tank the world economy. The massive deficits, fuelled by his ill-judged tax policies – he won’t replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes – and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will ignite a new round of inflation.

Most of all, the insane project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants – finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of internment camps around the country, probably for years, before doing so – will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late.

We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event. They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing “tough things” to “restore order?”

Some won’t, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things.

All of this will wash over Canada in various ways – some predictable, like the flood of refugees seeking escape from the camps; some less so, like the coarsening of our own politics, the debasement of morals and norms by politicians who have discovered there is no political price to be paid for it. And who will have the backing of their patron in Washington.

All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them.”

Canadian journalist, Andrew Coyne:

This Luigi business has, I think, really exposed something we all knew about in the US justice system, but has for so long been pretended to not exist by all of this country's communication and media controllers.

Despite the fact that we are all meant to be private citizens, all held within equal respect by and to the law, there are some very different classes of people as far as courts are concerned.

If Luigi Mangione had shot some middle class, pencil pushing office schlub or retail salesman, there'd have been a however temporary stink made about on the television. And if they ever did catch him, he'd be dragged through the courts, and maybe become the center of a "shame on you" piece on the 6 o'clock news. But in all likelihood they never would have bothered to catch him. They'd say "we're doing our best" and they'd forget about it. No manhunt, no media circus, no $60,000 bounty put on his head by the FBI.

If Luigi Mangione had shot, say, a black man, nothing would have happened at all. It's unlikely we would even have any inkling of it.

But Luigi Mangione didn't kill someone from the lower class, he didn't even kill someone from the middle class. He killed Bryan Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a Fortune 500 company. He killed a nobleman. And that means he's to be dragged into court surrounded by a small army of guards, charged with crimes wholly unrelated to whatever he's allegedly done, and before all of that, made the subject of a national manhunt.

If nothing else, it's become abundantly clear just who the courts consider to be worth their time.

The housing crisis considered as an income crisis

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

A paradox: in 1970, everyday Americans found it relatively easy to afford a house, and the average American house cost 5.9x the average American income. In 2024, Americans find it nearly impossible to afford a house, and the average American house costs…5.9x the average American income.

Feels like a puzzler, right? Can it really be true that the average American house is as affordable to the average American earner as it was in 1970? It is true, as you can see from Blair Fix's latest open access research report, "The American Housing Crisis: A Theft, Not a Shortage":

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2024/10/23/the-american-housing-crisis-a-theft-not-a-shortage/

Fix also points out that is even more true of rents than it is of house prices. The ratio of rent to average income has actually fallen slightly since 1970. Rents are also, in some mathematical sense, "affordable."

Now, those of you who are well-versed in statistical card-palming will likely have a pretty good idea of the statistical artifact at the root of this paradox: the word "average." If you remember your seventh grade math, you'll recall that "average" has more than one meaning. Sure, there's the most common one: add several values together, then divide the total by the number of values you added. For example, a nonzero number of people have one or zero arms, so the average human has slightly fewer than two arms.

That average is called the "mean." The mean US wage is pretty robust: $73,242/year:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A792RC0Q052SBEA/1000

But the majority of Americans are not earning anything like $73k/year. Since the Reagan years, the number of Americans living in poverty and extreme poverty has climbed and climbed. And while their declining income sure drags down that average, it's dragged way, way, way up by another group of Americans – the ultra-rich.

You see, as Fix writes, back in the Reagan years, America initiated an experiment in redistribution. Reagan enacted policies that moved most of the nation's wealth from the great majority of working people to a tiny minority of people who ended up owning pretty much everything. Throw their income into the mix, and the average American's income is sufficient to finance the average American home, with plenty to spare.

In other words, this isn't an "average human has fewer than two arms" situation, it's more like a "Spiders Georg" situation. Spiders Georg is a Tumblr meme about a guy who eats 10,000 spiders every day and is thus single-handedly responsible for the (false) statistic that the average human eats two spiders a week:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiders_Georg

The American rich – Reagan's progeny – are the Spiders Georg of house prices. By hoarding the great mass of American national wealth, they create a statistical mirage of affordable housing.

Now, that's interesting, but where Fix goes next with this is even more fascinating. If the average price of housing (relative to average income) has stayed fixed since 1970, then it follows that the price of housing isn't being driven up by a problem with supply. Rather, these numbers suggest that America has enough housing, it's just that (most) Americans don't have enough money.

If that's true – and I have a couple of quibbles, which I'll get to in a sec – then the most common prescription for solving American housing (building more of it) is somewhat beside the point. For Fix, using public funds to subsidize cheaper housing is like using public funds to pay for food stamps for working people whose wages are too low to keep them from starving. Sure, we should do that: no one should be without a home and no one should be hungry. But if working people can't afford shelter and food, then we have a wage problem, not a supply problem.

Fix – as ever – has a well-thought through, painstakingly documented "sources and methods" page to back up his conclusions:

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2024/10/23/the-american-housing-crisis-a-theft-not-a-shortage/#sources-and-methods

And while Fix acknowledges that reversing the mass transfer of wealth from working people to their bosses (and their bosses' idle offspring) is a big lift, he rightly wants to keep the question of wages (rather than housing supply) front and center in our debate about why so many of us are finding it hard to keep a a roof over our heads. We need progressive taxation, higher minimum wages, protection from medical and education debt, and hell, why not a job guarantee?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/25/canada-reads/#tcherneva

I love Fix's work, and this report is no exception. He does it all in his spare time. Some nice progressive think tank should give him a grant so he can do (a lot) more of it.

That all said, I do have a quibble with his conclusion about the adequacy of the American housing supply. In California, we have a shortage of 3-4 million homes, a number arrived at through the relatively robust method of adding up the number of California families that would like to have their own homes and subtracting the number of homes available near those families:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_housing_shortage

How to explain the discrepancy? One possibility is that the price of housing is artificially low, because more than 181,000 people are homeless here. Hundreds of thousands of more people are living in overcrowded housing, with multiple families inhabiting spaces intended for just one (or even a single person). If all of those people were competing for housing, the price might rise even higher.

Think of the people who have given up looking for work – because they're not in the workforce, wages go up. If they were competing in the labor market, wages would fall. Maybe all those people would prefer to have a job, but they're missing from the statistics.

That's one theory. Another is that we're getting tripped up on averages again here. California does have some towns with many vacancies, extra supply that is pushing down prices; it's also got many places with far more people who want to live there than there are homes for. It's possible that there's enough supply on average across the states, but – as we've seen – averages are deceptive.

Ultimately, I think both things can be true: we have a wage problem and we have (many, localized) supply problems. Both of these problems deserve our attention, and neither is acceptable in a civilized society.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/24/i-dream-of-gini/#mean-ole-mr-median

The SS Warrimoo, a passenger steamship traveling from Vancouver to Australia, was silently knifing its way across the mid-Pacific waters. The navigator had just finished calculating a star fix and handed the results to Captain John DS. Phillips.

The Warrimoo's coordinates were LAT 0º 31' N, LONG 179 30' W. The date was December 31, 1899. "Know what this means?" First Mate Payton announced, "We're only a few miles from the intersection of the Equator and the International Date Line."

Captain Phillips was prankish enough to seize the opportunity to do the nautical feat of a lifetime. He summoned his navigators to the bridge to double-check the ship's position. He altered his course slightly to focus directly on his target. He then altered the engine's speed.

The calm weather and clear night worked to his advantage. At midnight, the SS Warrimoo rested on the Equator, exactly where it had crossed the International Date Line. The ramifications of this odd arrangement were numerous.

The ship's bow was in the Southern Hemisphere, in the middle of summer. The stern was in the Northern Hemisphere, in the midst of winter. The date on the aft portion of the ship was December 31, 1899. The date on the forward half of the ship was January 1, 1900. The ship experienced multiple days, months, years, seasons, and centuries simultaneously.

Possibly the Most important thing you'll read this year...

The following is the philosophy of Charles Schulz, the creator of the 'Peanuts' comic strip.

You don't have to actually answer the questions. Just ponder on them. Just read it straight through, and you'll get the point.

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.

2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.

3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America pageant.

4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.

5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.

6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday.

These are no second-rate achievers.

They are the best in their fields.

But the applause dies.

Awards tarnish ...

Achievements are forgotten.

Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.

2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.

3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.

4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.

5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

Easier?

The lesson:

The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money ... or the most awards. They simply are the ones who care the most.

At fifty you can no longer bear the constraints. You can't stand the too-tight bra, the forced dinners with the sister-in-law who checks your dust in the corners, high heels and circumcising smiles.

At fifty you have no desire to prove anything. You are what you are: the things you've done and the things you still want to do. If others like it, fine, otherwise, it's the same.

At fifty it doesn't matter if you had children or not. You will be the mother anyway: of your mother, of your father, of an aunt left alone, of your dog or of a stray cat that you picked up from the street. And if all this is not there, you will be your own mother.

Because over the years you will be taught to take care of a body that you finally love, becoming more and more imperfect only in the eyes of others. Who cares if half the closet is the wrong size? The important thing is that your back does not creak too much when you stand up.

At fifty you want freedom. Free to say no, free to stay in your pajamas all Sunday, free to feel beautiful for yourself and not for others. Free to go it alone: those who love you will stay at your pace, those who don't care about others, at theirs. You are free to sing loudly in the car even if people glare at you at traffic lights.

You will have dreams like when you were in your twenties and you will ask every god for time to make them come true again. And now, just when you have eaten half of your life, in the hustle and bustle, you will find the desire to slowly taste the sugar and salt of the days that await you.

-Irene Renei

If you watch one thing today, please make it this from

@Lawrence. I implore you. Absolute fire.🔥🔥🔥

A DM’s Fair Play Guide To Plot Twists

I love running a game with a lot of surprises. The challenge to pulling this off well is that, unless you’re playing a one on one game, your players outnumber you: and between them, they have a good chance of figuring out what’s going to happen, no matter how sneaky and clever you are.

The first way of dealing with this - which I’ll just call the bullshit way - is to not give your players the information they need to solve the mystery. Don’t let them find out about the secret society until it’s too late. Don’t give them any reason to suspect that their NPC ally is planning to kill them. Don’t let them find the murder weapon, don’t let them locate the witnesses, don’t give them the chance to skip to the end of their investigation.

This sucks, and if you run your games like this, you’re going to piss off your players. Because it isn’t fair.

In mystery literature, a “fair play mystery” is one where the reader is given all of the information they need in order to figure out the solution before the Big Reveal. It’s what makes the reveal good: that GASP, the “oh shit, the knife! the knife from the party! that was hers! I forgot!”

Pulling off a twist in a fair play game is an incredible feeling. Your players will think you’re a genius (or an absolute dick bastard, which is just as good) and they’ll respect it more when they land in hot water that they plausibly could have avoided. So how do you run a fair play game without your players figuring out the twists ahead of time, given that you’re definitely not smarter than all of your players put together?

By fucking with their expectations.

Here are some things that I keep in mind, to keep my players guessing. And it’s important, with all of this, that if your players see through something, let them have it. They should figure out a lot of things on their own! But if you’re regularly seeding your stories with all of this stuff, eventually your players will miss something. Those are somethings you can build on. The same way that a low level enemy who gets away once can keep coming back again and again until they become an important antagonist, a misapprehension your party proves to have a blindspot for can grow and develop until they get smacked with a breathtaking twist. 

What’s a twist if not the sudden overturning of an assumption you never thought to question?

1: Make your powerful friendly NPCs know a lot…but not as much as the players think they do.

Player characters often end up with powerful allies. It would be very convenient for the party if those allies always had accurate information. Make sure they don’t always enjoy that convenience.

It’s a balancing act: you want your powerful NPCs to be powerful. You want this alliance to be meaningful and beneficial to your players. But give your NPC an Achilles heel of some kind, when it comes to the information at their disposal. The Noble General commands powerful forces and knows the lay of the enemy’s land well…but that doesn’t mean he knows what every squadron and scouting party is up to. The Political Mastermind may know the ins and outs of the court, and have keen insight into the motivations of others: but he has an enemy who pisses him off so much that he loses all objectivity around her. The Powerful Wizard can call upon great magic to aid the party: but his divinations aren’t as accurate as he thinks they are, and he’s prone to finding, in his signs and omens, what he wants to see, more than what’s actually there.

Most of the time, their information should be good! That will make it more likely that your players will trust them the one time when it isn’t.

2. Let (apparently) less powerful NPCs sometimes know more than the players think they do. 

Most NPCs aren’t the Noble General or the Powerful Wizard. Most NPCs are Daves, designed to get the players from place to place. Most of those Daves know about as much as you’d expect them to. But some Daves have plans of their own.

You don’t always have to signpost with big blinking lights which of your NPCs are ‘important,’ and which ones are ‘unimportant.’ Sneak in a crafty Dave from time to time. That assistant they talk to, every time they go to see the prince? That bitch knows everything, and she’s almost ready to make her move. 

3: There is no such thing as a completely reliable witness. 

If the players only get information from one person, that information should be flawed in at least one, potentially small, but important way. Smart players will seek a second opinion, or at least allow for the possibility that their information may be incomplete. But even smart players get out over their skis sometimes.

4: Let your NPCs be aware of the power of a first impression. 

If an NPC gives a strong first impression of being a particular kind of person, it’s because they’re comfortable giving that impression. That might be because it’s who they are. But maybe not.

One of the first characters the PCs met in a VtM campaign I ran was Gawaine. Gawaine was a good old pine-scented man’s man, with salt and pepper stubble and a blue Ford truck. He listened to AC/DC, and talked about the war. He was affable and honest and willing to lend a hand. You already know Gawaine. Everybody knows a Gawaine. Gawaines are trustworthy, salt of the earth types. You don’t necessarily think to question a Gawaine.

That’s exactly why Gawaine was such a useful persona for Krystiyan, the Tzimisce Voivode, a cruel and alien sculptor of flesh who “never left his haven.” There were plenty of clues that they were the same person, but that campaign was in its endgame before the players put them all together.

5: Sometimes, dangerous and villainous NPCs should be helpful and cooperative. 

Not even necessarily because they’re manipulating the players, or even deceiving them about their true natures, but because their interests and the players’ interests genuinely align…for the moment. 

One of the easiest levers in your players’ brains to exploit is the expectation that people who help you are your friends. Even if your players know, consciously, that they shouldn’t trust this person, most of the time they kind of can’t help it, if the NPC is genuinely helpful to them and at least a little charismatic. 

6: Sometimes, good and valuable NPCs should be unhelpful and uncooperative. 

No matter how mature your players are, there’s a natural tendency to react to uncooperative NPCs with a reflexive, “Hey, fuck you! We’re the protagonists! This guy is an asshole!” so from time to time have a helpful, honest, good-aligned NPC have a wholly justified but as-yet-unknown-to-the-party reason to flatly refuse to deal with them.

7: Every NPC should have a secret. 

Not necessarily a bad secret. Were it to be revealed, it might even make the party like them more! But for their own reasons, the NPC does not want their secret to come out, and they will lie to the party to protect it. Players go crazy when they realize they’re being lied to, and often jump to some wild assumptions about your NPC’s motivations. I’ve had an NPC lie about the opening hours of a shop, and had the PCs assume that they were black market dealers for the villain when the dude just wanted to be able to close early so he could go smoke weed in the park.

8. As a DM, it’s polite to remind your players of the common knowledge their characters would possess…even when it doesn’t reflect the truth.

We all know it’s tedious when the DM calls for a roll when you’re just asking for common knowledge. I shouldn’t have to make a roll to know the dumb space word for plastic in a Star Wars game. I shouldn’t have to make a roll to know who the Holy Roman Emperor is in a game about medieval vampires. The DM should supply common knowledge for free, whenever it comes up.

That doesn’t mean common knowledge is true.

This is different from just lying to your players, because you don’t put the weight of DM word-of-God behind it. It’s not “You would know this guy is a Ventrue, based on XYZ.” It’s “it would be a common assumption that this guy is a Ventrue, based on XYZ.” He might not be a Ventrue. It might in fact be extremely important that he is not a Ventrue. But if it is commonly assumed that he’s a Ventrue, that is - word for word - something you can share with your players. If they don’t look any deeper than common knowledge, that’s on them.

9. Obviously untrustworthy NPCs provide great air coverage for less obviously untrustworthy NPCs.

The obviously untrustworthy NPC might or might not be planning to betray the party. But if you introduce two untrustworthy NPCs in the same storyline, and one of them seems normal and cool and has a genuine plot-related reason to be there, and the other one is Jaffar, Jaffar’s gonna get clocked, but Susan over there will probably slip under the radar, and might even get tapped to help out with the whole Jaffar situation. They might get Susan’s number, by the end of the session. Susan might become an ‘ally.’ Susan might even get romanced by a party member. Play your cards right, and Jaffar might just end up a footnote in the introduction of Susan, Scourge of Worlds and most hated NPC in the entire campaign.

10. Your villains should always have a secret plan B.

Your villain isn’t stupid, right? And your villain probably isn’t so arrogant that it is inconceivable to them that their plan might fail. They’ve been planning this ritual for ten thousand years, after all. It’s always possible that some plucky band of heroes could show up at the last minute and murder your high priest, or steal your amulet, or seduce your second in command. So what does your villain have in his back pocket to make the players go, “Oh, shit - he planned for this!”

This may mean that there is a whole separate plot happening, running alongside the main story. This is great, because when weird things happen, the players have to figure out whether this is part of Plot A or Plot B, and working out who did what and why gets a lot more interesting. If they end up foiling Plot A, great - your villain was also secretly behind Plot B the whole time, and will transfer all of his resources over to that. 

Sometimes your players will figure out that Plots A and B were both the same plot the whole time, with the same villain at the head, and they’ll feel like the smartest people on the planet, and it will be their favorite moment of the entire game. That’s great! You gave them that!

Sometimes, they won’t. And when the villain of Plot A, apparently defeated, starts laughing and reveals that he was also the mastermind behind Plot B, which is now too late to be stopped, that will probably be your favorite moment of the entire game.

One thing I’ve never understood about D&D druids is how they’re so often imagined as stationary. They’re found ‘guarding sacred sites or watching over regions of unspoiled nature’. And, I know. This is mainly because of the imagery and popular imagination around sites like Stonehenge. But.

If I had the druid spell list? I would take Create Bonfire, and I would take Goodberry, and I would take Create or Destroy Water, and I would pack up a sleeping bag, and I would just start walking. Where? Everywhere! What’s down that road? What’s over that hill? What’s up this river? What’s past this forest? What’s over those dunes? Let’s go see! I can’t starve. I can’t parch. I can’t freeze. I can go forever. So I’m gonna.

Honestly, the druid should be the picture of the wandering vagabond. They have everything they need. You can just walk and keep walking, wherever the wanderlust takes you. You wanna go across an ocean? You can make drinking water. Ships should pay to carry you. You wanna go across a desert? A baby druid with one level and 2 measly spell slots under their belt can still make food and a gallon of water a day for 10 people. Druids should be the explorers, the navigators, the pathfinders. They can travel endlessly, without hurting that which they pass through, the very picture of ‘leave nothing but your footprints’. They can walk the earth, stopping here or there along the way to help where they need to help, and fight what they need to fight, and then they can move on again.

Yes, some druids get tired and settle down. Circles are formed, and that’s how baby druids get their starts, finding a circle. And some areas do need a permanent circle to defend or watch over them. But I do think there should be more of a picture, more of an image, more of an option, for the druid as the wanderer, the rover, the vagabond. A pocket full of berries and a wave of a hand for some rain. Just head out and follow your feet. What could stop you?

(Particularly the Stars druid, my beloved. Could there be a better picture of a navigator? That’s where a Stars druid belongs, at the prow of a ship, or guiding their people across trackless dunes, or carrying news across vast ice fields under an endless polar night to keep tiny isolated hamlets connected. Follow the stars, follow your feet. Yes, accomplish things in the process, but the journey itself is also enough. Just walk. Go. The stars will guide you).

Sorry. In real life, so often, I just really want to see what’s down that road, or over that hill. And, like. As a druid you could just go. You have all you need from a standing start. Well. You’ll have to get clothes and good boots and shit, but you can totally feed and water yourself for completely free and regardless of natural resources out there.

More druid wanderers, is my point here. Yes, still some druids guarding henges and forests, but more druids just walking about, poking their noses into things. There is no better spell list to indulge your wanderlust and curiosity. And that’s without getting into wildshape and the eventual ability to explore under the oceans and into the air. There’s a whole world full of nature. You don’t have to tie yourself to one little bit, unless you want to.

I asked an elderly man once what it was like to be old and to know the majority of his life was behind him. He told me that he has been the same age his entire life. He said the voice inside of his head had never aged. He has always just been the same boy. His mother's son. He had always wondered when he would grow up and be an old man. He said he watched his body age and his faculties dull but the person he is inside never got tired. Never aged. Never changed.

Our spirits are eternal. Our souls are forever. The next time you encounter an elderly person, look at them and know they are still a child, just as you are still a child and children will always need love, attention, and purpose.💙🦋💞

“Donald Trump threatens the entire existence of the American republic. He is able to do this because the Supreme Court he created is assisting him in doing so. It is a corrupt Court – on which more later. It overturned a central right for half of our population. It routinely mixes and matches rationales, jurisprudences, logics to arrive at the end point of transforming America into their extremist vision. We’ve heard that yesterday’s decision was a terrible decision, an extremist decision, that it changes the American experiment fundamentally. No disagreement with any of those points. Most importantly, in my mind, it’s a fake decision. Yes, it will now be controlling within the federal courts. But it doesn’t change the constitution any more than a foreign army occupying New England would make Massachusetts no longer part of the United States. That may seem like a jarring analogy. But it’s the only kind that allows us to properly view and react to this Supreme Court.”

—

The rationale for the decision yesterday has literally no basis whatsoever in the US constitution.

Josh Marshall is correct, but I don’t think it matters. This corrupt, activist, fascist SCOTUS does not care. The majority has decided that the Constitution, 250 years of precedent, popular opinion, and the foundational ideas that have made America what it is since 1787 are what they say they are.

I live in a country of three hundred and forty million people.

In this country, six unelected christian nationalists, five of whom were placed on the court by presidents who lost the popular vote, who are opposed by SEVENTY PERCENT of the population, are making up laws out of whole cloth because their power is unchecked and can impose their regressive authoritarianism on that entire population is not a free country.

America has not been attacked like this since 9/11. Six unelected people forcing their christian nationalist agenda on a population of three hundred and forty million is not a Democracy. It is tyranny.

Everyone is missing the central message of yesterday’s ruling: SCOTUS is going to install Trump as dictator for life, by any means necessary. Somehow, after he loses the popular vote again, and after he’s even lost the Electoral College again, these six Fascists will invent a reason to overturn the will of the electorate, again. Every single one of their rulings this term have been part of their coup. Now, just line them all up and connect the dots.

We are four months away from the likely end of what passes for freedom in America, and once it’s gone, it’s not coming back in my lifetime.

“In her dissent, Kagan underscored the political mechanics underlying the majority opinion in usually bald terms for a justice on a Court so prizing comity and respect. She traced the conservatives’ recent rulings, in which they give themselves enough excuses to toss Chevron since it’s become outmoded anyway. In each, the majority grasped for novel reasons to ignore the precedent. In a one-two punch, Kagan also pointed out that this kind of behavior, reverse engineering a string of cases to get a hall pass to overturn long established precedent, has become habitual. “This Court has ‘avoided deferring under Chevron since 2016’ because it has been preparing to overrule Chevron since around that time,” she wrote. “That kind of self-help on the way to reversing precedent has become almost routine at this Court.””

—

Supreme Court Executes Massive Power Grab From Executive Branch In New Ruling

“…reverse engineering a string of cases to get a hall pass to overturn long established precedent, has become habitual.“

That’s the entire game.

The stolen SCOTUS majority is throwing out precedent and overturning decades of settled law. It is taking rights and protections away from all Americans, and rightly has its lowest approval rating in history. It is almost finished making itself into an unelected, unaccountable, untouchable Star Chamber. It has become the enforcement arm of the people behind Project 2025. I fully expect them to rule in favor of Trump’s outrageous immunity claim, because they are fully on board with everything he did and intends to do if he seizes power again.

This SCOTUS majority is a direct and existential threat to everything we think of when we hear “the American way of life”, laws and precedent be damned.

As far as I can tell, the only way to do anything about this is to expand the Court to nullify them, and I just don’t see that happening any time soon.

🌎

Old Lighters 🤔

When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, “What is your objective?”

He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelli’s magnum opus. Of course he’d already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)

I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.

What is your objective?

Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the men’s right whiners are on about now. You won’t find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.

I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friend’s parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctly—the teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.

I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They don’t have an objective. They don’t know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.

Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashi’s Five Rings. Read The Art of War. They’re classics for a reason. They can’t cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything you’re getting in middle school and high school curricula.

Don’t vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I don’t care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They don’t care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.

How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?

Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.

Don’t be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?

the funny thing is that i don't think younger people - and i mean those under the age of 40 - really have a grasp on how many of today's issues can be tied back to a disastrous reagan policy:

war on drugs: reagan's aggressive escalation of the war on drugs was a catastrophic policy, primarily targeting minority communities and fueling mass incarceration. the crusade against drugs was more about controlling the Black, Latino and Native communities than addressing the actual problems of drug abuse, leading to a legacy of broken families and systemic racism within the criminal justice system.

deregulation and economic policies: reaganomics was an absolute disaster for the working class. reagan's policies of aggressive tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, and slashing social programs were nothing less than class warfare, deepening income inequality and entrenching corporate greed. these types of policies were a clear message that reagan's america was only for the wealthy elite and a loud "fuck you" to working americans.

environmental policies: despite his reputation being whitewashed thanks to the recovery of the ozone layer, reagan's environmental record was an unmitigated disaster. his administration gutted critical environmental protections and institutions like the EPA, turning a blind eye to pollution and corporate exploitation of natural resources. this blatant disregard for the planet was a clear sign of prioritizing short-term corporate profits over the future of the environment.

AIDS crisis: reagan's gross neglect of the aids crisis was nothing short of criminal and this doesn't even begin to touch on his wife's involvement. his administration's indifference to the plight of the lgbtq+ community during this devastating epidemic revealed a deep-seated bigotry and a complete failure of moral leadership.

mental health: reagan's dismantling of mental health institutions under the guise of 'reform' led directly to a surge in homelessness and a lack of support for those with mental health issues. his policies were cruel and inhumane and showed a personality-defining callous disregard for the most vulnerable in society.

labor and unions: reagan's attack on labor unions, exemplified by his handling of the patco strike, was a blatant assault on workers' rights. his actions emboldened corporations to suppress union activities, leading to a significant erosion of workers' power and rights in the workplace. he was colloquially known as "Ronnie the Union Buster Reagan"

foreign policy and military interventions: reagan's foreign policy, particularly in latin america, was imperialist and ruthless. his administration's support for dictatorships and right-wing death squads under the guise of fighting "communism" showed a complete disregard for human rights and self-determination of other nations.

public health: yes, reagan's agricultural policies actually facilitated the rise of high fructose corn syrup, once again prioritizing corporate profits over public health. this shift in the food industry has had lasting negative impacts on health, contributing to the obesity epidemic and other health issues.

privatization: reagan's push for privatization was a systematic dismantling of public services, transferring wealth and power to private corporations and further eroding the public's access to essential services.

education policies: his approach to education was more of an attack on public education than anything else, gutting funding and promoting policies that undermined equal access to quality education. this was, again, part of a broader agenda to maintain a status quo where the privileged remain in power.

this is just what i could come up with in a relatively short time and i did not even live under this man's presidency. the level at which ronald reagan has broken the united states truly can't be overstated.

Just Do It: Advice for Young Friends

By Bud Koenemund

(Written: January 2014)

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine mentioned she was about to begin her last year as a twenty-something; 30 would be upon her before she knew it. She went on to list 50 things she wants to accomplish in the coming year – many of which involve money and her art (she is a wonderful actress). It is an ambitious list. I wished her luck, and gave her a few words of advice. Since then I’ve been thinking about what I said, and realized I needed to add some more – both for her and for my other young friends, many of whom are artists of one type or another.

If I can give you one piece of advice: DO IT! Do everything on your list! Don’t wait around thinking there will be a better time to start. There won’t be. There is only time, and it goes a lot faster than you realize. Before you know it, you’ll be 30. You’ll go from 30 to 40 in about 10 minutes. And, from 40 to 50 even faster. Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, or Neil deGrasse Tyson might argue with me, but time really does speed up as you get older.

When I was your age, I thought 30 was old, and that I’d never get there. Hell, there were a few days when I was in the Army, I didn’t think I’d make it to 22. Now, I’m 45 and there’s very little I wouldn’t trade to go back to 25 knowing what I know now.

I wish I could make you understand me. I know you don’t. You can’t. This is not an insult. It’s just the way life works. You don’t know what you don’t know until years down the road. I was young. I had plans, and I didn’t want to listen to “old” people. I had all the answers. I know so much more now.

One of the most important things I’ve learned about life is that it doesn’t mean shit. In a hundred years, you’ll be dead, and very little of this will matter. What people think of you now or then won’t mean a damned thing. Sure, you might change the world; bring about peace in the Middle East; cure cancer; win a dozen awards – but it won’t affect how your private life is judged.

Whether you graduated first in your class at Harvard, or at the bottom of a community college; if you’re buttoned-down and conservative, or you get caught running naked through Times Square; even if your ex- posts your “No, Baby, I swear I’m the only one who’ll ever see it” sex tape on-line; it might rate a line or two in your Wikipedia entry, and that’s it. And, if you’re dead – and if everyone you know, and who judged you, is dead too – what will you care?

Too many people in this world give a shit about things that don’t matter a bit, especially other people’s business. I figure, if you’re not hurting someone else, and what you’re doing works for you, fuck what other people think. It took me a long time to develop that attitude.

You have to do what makes you happy. Do it your way, but do it. Sing your song. If people don’t like it, fuck ‘em. You’re on your journey, not theirs. You have to do what you can with the time you’ve got.

But, remember, it’s also important to stop and look at the world around you once in a while, to sit down and relax; take your bearings, and make sure you’re on the right path. I should say, make sure you’re on the right path for you!

It’s OK to be a waitress, or a tire salesman, or a security guard, as long as you’re also working toward what you love. If you have five minutes, sit down and read the trade papers, or scribble down the words banging around in your head.

Wayne Gretzky says, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” That applies to everything in life. 100 percent of the sonnets you don’t submit get rejected. You’re passed over for 100 percent of the parts you don’t audition for. You don’t get 100 percent of the raises you don’t ask for. The worst anybody can say is no.

Now, I’m not saying you’re automatically entitled to anything. This is life. It’s not fair. The world doesn’t owe you shit; not money, not love, not happiness, not success. You have to work for what you want, and keep at it. And, in the end, it may get you nowhere. But, if you don’t go after what you want, you’ll end up nowhere anyway. You pays your dollar, and you takes your chances!

Oh, and one more thing: Don’t spend too much time sitting around, listening to old men – like me – spout off about what you should be doing. There is no instruction book for life, and most people who claim to have things figured out are faking it, just like the rest of us.

New Crow Time 🐦‍⬛🦊🌟

Saving to see if it’s true

WHY SRIRACHA WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND AND NOW TASTES BAD

If you like hot sauces and the like you probably have been a big fan of sriracha... specifically the sriracha made by Huy Fong Foods. But, you may have noticed that since 2020 there have been noticeable times where it was sold out for months and months. Even worse - now that it is back on shelves it tastes like crap.

I did some digging.

All of the peppers for Huy Fong Foods Sriracha were grown on Underwood Ranches in Ventura County, CA. Family-owned farm (since the 1800s) that grew along with Huy Fong Foods. Starting at 400 acres and growing to almost 4000 to support the popularity of sriracha. This was when it tasted good. In the late 20-teens Huy Fong decided to demand money back from the farm for... no one really fully understands why. They then severed the contract leaving Underwood with 4000 acres of hot peppers and no one to buy them.

Meanwhile Huy Fong approached a number of other farms scattered across southern California and had them quickly spin up pepper concerns. This put a massive dip in their supply and they lost a year of sauce-making basically. Then bad weather knocked out a lot of these farms and they lost another season or two. Also the quality and flavor across multiple farms was inconsistent.

Meanwhile Underwood sued Huy Fong, won, received 23 million dollars, hired back their workers, and got back to growing. Additionally they were able to mitigate a lot of the weather issues the last few years through better technique and had bumper crops.

So they made their own sauce - Underwood Dragon Sriracha...

and lord strike me down if it doesn't taste much more like the older sriracha than whatever Huy Fong Foods is making now. Anyways, they don't seem to sell to stores but you can buy directly from their website. I did and I've been putting it on everything.

I wasn't paid to write this... I just like doing exhaustive research about things I enjoy.

(EDIT to adjust Underwood Farms to Underwood Ranches, and change location from Ventura to Ventura County)

Source: https://www.facebook.com/sean.baptiste.125/posts/10159735977401881

If you want to know why people have lost faith in capitalism, this might help

I did not write this - but WOW does it speak to my heart!!! Worth the read.

Barely the day started and... it's already six in the evening.

Barely arrived on Monday and it's already Friday.

... and the month is already over.

... and the year is almost over.

... and already 40, 50 or 60 years of our lives have passed.

... and we realize that we lost our parents, friends.

and we realize it's too late to go back...

So... Let's try, despite everything, to enjoy the remaining time...

Let's keep looking for activities that we like...

Let's put some color in our grey...

Let's smile at the little things in life that put balm in our hearts.

And despite everything, we must continue to enjoy with serenity this time we have left. Let's try to eliminate the afters...

I'm doing it after...

I'll say after...

I'll think about it after...

We leave everything for later like ′′ after ′′ is ours.

Because what we don't understand is that:

Afterwards, the coffee gets cold...

afterwards, priorities change...

Afterwards, the charm is broken...

afterwards, health passes...

Afterwards, the kids grow up...

Afterwards parents get old...

Afterwards, promises are forgotten...

afterwards, the day becomes the night...

afterwards life ends...

And then it's often too late....

So... Let's leave nothing for later...

Because still waiting see you later, we can lose the best moments,

the best experiences,

best friends,

the best family...

The day is today... The moment is now...

We are no longer at the age where we can afford to postpone what needs to be done right away.

So let's see if you have time to read this message and then share it.

Or maybe you'll leave it for... ′′ later "...

And you'll never share it....