You could say the same for every day of the cursed year of 2020, but my timeline seems to have been particularly dark since reviewing – and being bit by – Cultist Simulator. It was indeed a fit spooky choice for October, which dragged me through the month as I’ve tried to keep up my horror viewing in the middle of everything else.
Is Ignite Cannabis Co. trying to tell us something?
At my stoner DabConnection gig, we’ve become the freelance police of the cannabis industry busting fake brands of THC vape cartridges left and right. But this time I got interested in a real brand managed by an Instagram influencer Dan Bilzerian, though “real” and “managed” are both up for debate. The brand has raised millions in investor funding and squandered millions more with Bilzerian apparently going through the most hysterical public midlife-crisis ever. We’re talking $50 million in 2019 alone!
Parents should take education into their own hands, even before COVID-19
Even though we sent our kids through public school, we homeschooled them as if they weren’t attending. That’s because the public school system in the US is so gutted, so hostile to intelligence, such a Babylon of pseudo-learning idolatry, that I have to wonder if it does more harm than good.
I dunno, it’s like US schools had some other focus besides learning. I can’t quite put my finger on it though. It’s on the tip of my tongue.
Maybe I’ll recall what it is…
In case you missed it (because who even checks by this dead blog to begin with?), I also covered freelance writing in a post-COVID-19 world. So there, you have your school covered and your work covered, all off-grid. Call us when we get a government that’s interested in doing anything for people again.
We’re back with another update from Penguin Pete, that blur you might have seen sprinting around trying to catch up on all his projects. I’m so busy blogging that I don’t have time to blog about my blogs.
Cannabis Culture – The Fake Cart Wars continue!
First, Sherbinski, a counterfeited real brand with a history so disgusting that this time I’m rooting for the bootleggers. The guy who founded this boutique brand is a clueless, Narcissistic, spoiled infant who insists that he invented the universe with his stupid orange vape cartridge packaging, and teamed up with Post Malone for a promotional deal. Don’t know who Post Malone is? Lucky you. But just imagine if you compiled a worldwide database of every child porn collector and had a computer AI form a composite from all the mugshots. Ready? Here it is:
All of us nerds made zombie apocalypse jokes at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’m not so sure we’re joking any more. I’m sure as hell not.
Whenever I have braved the Outside World to forage for supplies lately, I get closer and closer to getting into a fight myself. I grew up in the mean ‘hoods of south L.A. so I’m no stranger to rumbles. I’m not scared for myself, but I had hoped for a more peaceful coast to retirement in a tranquil suburb by now.
You can clearly distinguish Team Human from Team Zombie
Team Human are the people who believe in science and reason. They wear their masks and gloves, use sanitary wipes and disinfectant, and keep their distance. They respect the store employees. All of us are out to go about our business quickly and efficiently with the least amount of drama.
Team Zombie isn’t buying any of that. They don’t wear protective gear, and make it a point to get into everybody’s face around every corner. They’re hostile and confronting. They scoff at our “imaginary” pandemic and vaccines and all of our “so-called” science. They’re out to pick a fight at every opportunity.
*NOTE*: This isn’t a normal blog post; this is a declaration of war. It is tactical and dirty because it was a dirty fight already before I got here.
Wait, I thought I was done fighting about free and open source software…
Yes, I distinctly remember closing down my old FOSS-focused blog, delivering my final battle report for the Great Linux Desktop Wars, getting one last laugh at the con artists I helped shut down, and moving on. The mobile market gives the read-only users their software, and we makers and doers have our laptops, so everyone’s happy. Android rules the mobile, Linux rules the server and industrial sector, it’s Miller time, right?
Dr. Roy Schestowitz, one of my old comrades in the FOSS wars, gave me a nice send-off in 2013. So yes, I must have properly retired.
Why is this still happening? Well, actually, a new thing is happening.
The Old Thing that was happening: Everybody had nothing but desktops and laptops. Makers and doers, us working folk, needed these tools to make and do stuff, using Linux and command lines and programming. Read-only users, people who do nothing but consume, wanted computers to be dumbed down TV sets for them to drool on, while hunting us geeks down in the streets to brand our foreheads with the scarlet “elitist” and then force everyone to use Microsoft Windows.
(To make a long story short, OK?)
That thing stopped happening because hallelujah, mobile came along and saved us. The read-onlys could have their TV set in their pocket and never cared about our tools again. It’s been a loooooong time since I heard anybody attack a command line.
But here’s the New Thing happening: Now the read-onlys outnumber the makers 9-to-1, and they are in charge. The read-onlys want to dumb down our tools anyway because they want everybody to use mobile like them and can’t see why we need powerful, complicated tools to do stuff. If they can’t get us onto mobile, beside them, so that no work gets done, they want to break the tools we use on laptop so we’re screwed anyway. Out of spite.
Dangerous things happen when you put a read-only in charge of an open source software project, especially when he’s the CEO of the company that owns it, and is – stop me if you’ve heard this before – yet another trust fund baby born into wealth and prestige who spits on people who do work.
Again, I thought this was over. I don’t want to go back in the trenches, I thought everyone had learned that lesson!
This is about WordPress, Gutenberg, and Matt Mullenweg
Get used to those three terms, because you’ll be seeing them a lot around here in the coming months.
UPDATE 04/19/20:Readers have uncovered a massive, coordinated asstroturf campaign to spread fake news and rally a denialist uprising about the CoronaVirus. Buzzfeed concurs, noting ties to a special interest group.
See, I told you it was deliberate, not ignorance! Listen to your prophet next time.
The US is currently the most-infected country in the world. At a rate of one thousand people dying per day, we will soon match and surpass the countries where the virus has taken its deadliest toll. Currently that’s Italy, at 15K deaths. The US can catch up to that number by next week at this rate.
In the middle of all this, we still have a shockingly high denial factor.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and leader of the White House CoronaVirus Task Force, has been getting death threats. Merely for doing his job.
We could go on all day of course, but that’s enough examples for now. At this point, either the reader has turned away, or else I’m preaching to the choir. Because reality is politicized. So it’s time we looked at how it got that way.
Today, Chrome is the web browser that dominates the online market, by virtue of being the home browser for Android, which dominates the mobile market. Hooray. #AnyoneButMicrosoft.
But before that, the web’s browser was Firefox, which is still pretty solid on the desktop. Firefox is the progeny of Mozilla, and the story of Mozilla’s most successful product, the Firefox web browser, goes even further back into the history of the web itself. Interestingly, Firefox’s lineage brings it surprisingly close to other web browsers that it competed with – especially the web browser with a big, blue ‘e’ for its logo…
The scoop: Over at my long-standing 366WeirdMovies gig, I undertook my own side challenge to figure out the best / weirdest Kurt Vonnegut film adaptation.
So far, the score is settled at Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) as the best, but maybe second-weirdest. A strong case is to be made for the utterly bonkers Slapstick of Another Kind (1982), but it is a terrible movie, almost painful despite its all-star comedy cast. Last and definitely least is Breakfast of Champions (1999), which is not only bad, but damn near a war crime and a deliberate sabotage of Vonnegut’s work by a director with nothing but hatred and ugliness in his heart, Alan Rudolph.
I have seen Mother Night (1996) too, and while it is very good, I didn’t recall it being a contender for weirdness.
Here it is Christmas Eve, and I’ve JUST NOW shoveled my way out from under my workload to pay attention to my own site for a change.
I know most of you want to think about this like you need a hole in your mistletoe, but I promise it’s funny and enlightening. The Impeachment of Donald J. Trump examines where we are, how we got here, where we might be going, and – are you sitting down for this? It actually explains things so they make *some* sense!
It’s a defining Christmas for the Trumpster. Lots of soul-searching is due (though we may be sure none will be undertaken). If ghosts of Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and John McCain visited him tonight, that would be most fitting.
Bottom line: Front-runner wins, everybody else GTFO! I dress it up in my characteristic snark, of course, but the nut of the matter is we lost 2016 because the only thing a Democrat seems to hate worse than a Republican is another Democrat. When Republicans are onstage, all I hear are people ripping up Democrats. When Democrats are on stage, all I hear are people ripping up Democrats. We need allies, not saboteurs.
I don’t care who’s polling at the top, if it’s a fireplug, everybody else needs to bow out, shut up, drop out, and throw their support behind the fireplug! This is the easiest election to win ever! All you have to do is present a united front.
Bill Maher points it out: “All the Democrats have to do is come off LESS CRAZY THAN TRUMP and of course they’re blowing it!”
Please, people, save your petty little tent agendas for some other year. This is a life and death election. We are amidst a Cold Civil War. Our nation’s soul is at stake. The Titanic is sinking and Democrats can’t stop fighting over how to redecorate the underwater ballroom.
