Good morning. Hello. How are you? #476
Codify Roe. Luke and the Academy and the mysteries of storytelling. Dreams of boat grouting. A nice big chunk of catastrophizing about china, wildfires, hurricanes, blackouts etc.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? Doing okay? What day is it? Wednesday? Oh, snap. Thought it was Thursday. Drat. Looking very cloudy out. Ooo a sixty-sixty percent chance of rain today. Jane will be very excited. She loves asking about chances of precipitation. Day twenty without nicotine. It is getting “easier” but the fits still happen constantly, I’m still chewing a shit-ton of mints it really is insane. My leg injury is doing better, but the bruise has grown, grown, grown. It’s now deep, deep red, black and blue, and covers a full one-half of my upper leg. It is madness. I sent a photo to a few friends “in the biz” last night. Everyone agreed it was an absurdly large bruise. Arnica gel all around, etc. etc. But I can walk. I can’t pivot, close my legs, lift my leg, but it is undeniably getting better. Steady as she goes.
I probably ruined my seedlings because I couldn’t hobble out to the garage for three days to water them, and, being a horrible gardener, I forgot about them and didn’t ask Emma to take care of them. I’m sorry little spinaches, I really do love you.
So, lotta people saying that Roe v Wade, the supreme court ruling that has protected access to abortion for the last 48 years, fell last night. They’re saying this because the Supreme Court did not issue an injunction to stop a batshit, malevolent, full-on Fascist fantasy law from passing in the state of Texas last night. The law is completely insane, horrifying and terrible. Not just for the usual way that anti-abortion laws are terrible, the ones that red states pass every year even though they know they’re illegal (real law-and-order crowd, those Republicans), but because it turns every lunatic in the country into a potential snitch to sue and harass every person even remotely connected to abortions down to bus drivers. It’s lunacy and manifestly unconstitutional. It had an emergency stay pending at the Supreme Court, but the court does not seem to have stayed the law prior to it going into effect last night.
Now, this doesn’t mean they can’t still stay the law before they hear the case. I think this is still quite likely, because I think at least one, more like four, Justices of the Supreme Court are assholes and do not care about the real-world ramifications of their action or inaction, and will operate on their own time, and might just put something out today or tomorrow. This, I think, is very likely. That, of course, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t find the law constitutional down the road, of course. I do think there’s a non-zero chance that this law is a bridge to far even for one or two of them, entirely unrelated to abortion, and they have a nice, pretty, case coming down the pike to overturn Roe in a much less messy way this fall.
But, nonetheless, here we are, Wednesday morning, and the Texas law, manifestly contradicting not just Roe but decisions this court made last year, is now law. And, at this moment, Roe is gone.
It needs to be said however, that fixing this is NOT HARD, and we should have done it a long time ago. We could fix this today. We could enshrine Roe as the law of the land today. All we have to do is pass a law saying abortion is legal. It is that easy. The entire judicial body of work is a scaffolding upon a single court decision saying that an abortion is a constitutional right. But there are lots of things that we can do, that are legal, that aren’t constitutional rights. We do these because laws have been passed saying we can do them. The legally minded amongst you will chafe at this because supposedly in this country, if something isn’t explicitly illegal, we can do it, but the whole point here is keeping states from making something explicitly illegal. And there is a great, big, other body of court decisions telling us the sorts of things the federal government can regulate, and health, and doctors, and state overreach are all things the government definitely can regulate.
It’s not just me saying this. Elizabeth Warren, bless her soul, had a plan for it (OMG I miss Liz’s Medium account). It was discussed in one of the democratic debates. Obama said he would do it, first thing, then didn’t get around to it, for “other legislative priorities,” which is what’s happening again. We’ve known this was coming, there has been plenty of time to fix it. We can fix it right now. Krysten Sinema has a 100% score from NARAL. Joe Manchin, once again, is fucking useless, but Lisa Murkowski claims to be pro-choice, as is Susan Collins, supposedly, her bullshit supreme court antics notwithstanding, let her put her money where her mouth is finally, as is West Virginia’s other senator, Shelley Moore Capito. The votes are almost certainly there.
We can fix this.
My friend Lisa has a Patreon and she’s over in Europe and of course she’s comparing Europe to America and she said something like “I don’t want you guys to think I’m bashing on America constantly” and she provided this quote from an unnamed gentleman she was talking to, and even though I’m quoting some dude I don’t know, from a paywalled Patreon, I’m gonna quote him anyway, cuz he seems wise. Regarding America, “He said that at this moment, it is the apex in the world of chaos and impending destruction, and that is the greatest possibility for creation, like an earthquake opens cracks in an earth that we thought was solid and where nothing could be done.”
That is an interesting viewpoint. It is depressing and hopeful all at once.
All right what else what else. I spent an extraordinary amount of time thinking about Luke’s line to Uncle Owen, “And if those droids do work out, I’d like to transmit my application to the academy this year.” And, like, how Biggs and Wedge already went to the academy. But Biggs and Wedge are part of the rebellion when Luke shows up on Yavin 4, and Luke is only kind-of surprised, at least in that extended scene in the Special Edition, he expresses no surprise in the original cut. And the rebellion has no academy. And so Biggs, Wedge, and Luke were all talking about applying to the Empire’s academy, and how crazy it would have been if fucking Darth Vader’s son just showed up at the Imperial Academy I’m sure that would have worked out great. But also that all three of those dudes were so desperate to get off of that dumb-ass planet they were content to go to the Imperial Academy even though Luke hated the empire. Kinda sad. Of course the books and comics explain all of this and Biggs got through the academy and then was recruited by the rebellion, all in, it seems like, a year or two, so, you know, tough academy. But also when I was a kid, all of this just added to the mystery. It didn’t connote some lazy writing or unresolved plot lines, it connoted a deeper mystery, more to learn about. It just kinda worked. It worked so well that it wasn’t for forty-four years I thought to myself ‘hey wait that was probably a screw up’ and sure, it turns out it was, but also it wasn’t, and it is great. Luke running into Biggs on Yavin 4 is like randomly running into some old friend of yours on a trip to Portugal or something. yeah it’s weird, but it happens.
Of course there’s tons of this in The Force Awakens, but by then, well, my narrative BS detectors had kicked into 21st century perfectionist overdrive and I don’t buy coincidences anymore, which, now that I’m thinking about it, is a damn shame.
Last week I watched this just spectacular video of some people grouting a boat. Like, there’s a wooden hull, and between the wooden planks, you have to smoosh in a ton of grout to keep the boat waterproof. These people are volunteering (or maybe getting paid, but i think they’re volunteering) with this master boat builder who is rescuing a 100 year-old yacht. It’s just a group of people hanging out at a boat farm working on a boat, slowly, so, so, slowly. Over years. Some come and go. And I’ve been watching these peeps for a while, but the whole thing was waaaay too skilled for me, but… grouting for a week? I could do that! That sounds like the perfect fucking job for me. My god if I could find a job grouting that presented the same economic life for me as my current job? I would become a grouter so fast. LOOK how calming and rewarding this job is:
Insane.
INSANE.
Very good article in the New York Times yesterday about the symbiotic relationship between Accenture and Facebook, and how Accenture makes five hundred million dollars a year off of being Facebook’s primary supplier of moderation employees. I… did not know this? Like.. I knew that Facebook had no balls and wouldn’t take on the task, of, like, actually employing the people that keep Facebook safe because why would keeping your product safe be a core competency of your company. But I didn’t know that Accenture was the main force behind it. I thought it was a lot of sad-ass tech “moderation” startups that were secretly run by ex-Facebook employees who were tacitly encouraged to quit and start these businesses so Facebook could keep it off books. But… LOL nope, they just hired Accenture like everyone else does. I think that’s just hilarious. We are so innovative and pioneering we’re going to hire the exact same people that Pillsbury hires. Fantastic.
I will never get over that there are two “startups” called Quip and no one seems to mind:
And, rounding out our “tech section” today, here is a fascinating article about how ARM China went rogue and basically stole the entire company from ARM. Just fantastic. China is so brilliantly off the rails these days and people are so desperate to pretend they’re not. They just told every kid in the country they could only play video games for three hours a week, and only on weekends. I mean… that’s just gloriously batshit. Like wrong and paternalistic at the same time. Really something.
There is an increasing, non-zero chance that the entire world will be a fascist hellscape by the time I’m, like, seventy, and I’ll be in jail for these writings by then.
But it won’t matter because we’ll all be dead from drought and storms and climate change by then. The entire west will be out of water. Once again, we could see this coming, and we didn’t do anything about it. I swear. Cadillac Desert should be required reading in school. I’ve been thinking for a while the entire west and midwest would be parched in due time, but kinda thought we had another few years. But now I suppose I should just go ahead and assume the midwest won’t last the decade, the Ogallala is running dry, we all know it, we don’t do anything, we don’t even talk about it, but the breadbasket of the nation is toast. It’s just a matter of time.
What’s eerie and unpleasant to me now is that when these things happen, my first thought is “well, yep. What did we think was going to happen? We knew this was going to happen.” Like right now, any minute now, we might lose Tahoe, and all I can think is “Well, yep. That makes sense.” I am conditioned now, every day, to just assume some new horror is going to happen, and it doesn’t feel surprising when they do.
There was a section in the cybersecurity book I recently read about how insecure our nation’s power grid is and how the feds did a study and found that a coordinated attack on the grid could bring down the grid not for days, not for weeks, not even for months, but for over a year. A year without power. It’s a hop skip and a jump away. A year without power is more in the cards than another season of Watchmen. A year. So Louisiana loses power for a couple weeks and I just think “lucky. Close call.” This is not good!
But it’s not right, and I force myself to return to sympathy, to empathy. To action.
Oh god. Sorry. I will stop.
I got a couple records in the mail yesterday — deeply indefensible act of environmental brutality I cannot defend and desperately need to stop. It was three records, all used, but, you know, transport and shipping costs. And the guy who sent him to me, it’s like he knew my neuroses and was fucking with me. They were the most overpackaged records I have ever received. These three records had seven cardboard inserts protecting them. They were also wrapped in bubble wrap – and then taped up so tight I had to use a knife to get the bubble wrap off, which, PSA, is not a cool thing to do to records. And, like, I can compost the cardboard, but this bubble wrap is now un-reusable, covered in tape, cut up into small pieces. I hated this guy, and myself, for all of this packaging. This is not healthy!
Dammit the clouds went away. I’m gonna have to go out there in the heat on my bad leg and water the plants today.
Okay let’s do a mix. Punkish mix! See the bookending? Start with Big Black, end with Shellac. I gotta admit, I am kinda surprised Big Black, Shellac and Fugazi are even on Spotify. But here we are. Also, yes, I put Carter USM on a punkish mix. I feel like those mid-90’s English punks who used synths to make punk deserve their props. It was cool, even if people didn’t think it was cool. I mean, everyone thinks Atari Teenage Riot is cool, why not Carter USM. Right? Right?
Anyway. Miss you guys. Still ramping up getting back in the groove of writing these things with this injury. It hurts to sit in this seat, though I did swap out my seat for a slightly less painful one. Talk soon!
Rick, you ruined my morning in the most delicious way. I can’t stop searching for more boat grouting videos. And, by the way, Mr. Smarty Pants, how do you spell “fairing”? Like when the dude with the sander & plane (or is it plain?), levels off the deck beams (or beems? — I think I’m losing my mind here!)