^H

Well, today’s been spent trying to figure out how to pay my protection racket to a professional organization that shall remain nameless.

At least the guys in the fancy suits actually provide something worthwhile.

And the restaurant suggestions they give generally turn out to be worhtwhile.

I’m also having major reflections on the NFL after seeing what the post-Awokening mob have done to the Redskins, and seeing this on Twitter this morning.

Can I support a league that is so closely tied to the company that employs him as a spokesman? Should I?

This line of thinking was certainly feeding in to my back-and-forth with Robbie “The Fire”. on Twitter yesterday:

@RobbieTheFire Also, I’d order from FYCorp. Can’t sell liquor everywhere, though. In blue-just-like-Harry-Byrd-imagined, you have to buy *all* distilled liquor from the Commonwealth. That’s even true for restaurants.

— 757sean (@757sean) July 4, 2020

He’d been talking about starting a corporation, the “F You Corporation,” that sells things apart from the woke mob.

But I’ve been quietly doing that sort of thing, on my own, for years. I used to not need to advertise it.

Can I say, “no,” to Nike, and the NFL?

Yeah, I actually probably can.

Would it make a difference?

I have no idea.

But I can leave, and live my life as I choose.

(And, see, this is where I start in to the whole bit about how if you disagree, well, shoot me, because I don’t deserve to live if me living is not up to your standards….)

Some people, about whom I care, might be disappointed, and that’s something I have to weigh.

But, regardless, at this point, there’s absolutely no way I’ll purchase a single thing from Nike if they continue to employ CK.

If someone asks me why, I’ll explain.

Otherwise, it’s for me to know, and just walk away. (And take my dollars with me.)

Where did the Non-aggression principle touch you?

Listening to this right now, after seeing a friend on the cesspool that is Facebook blame everything that’s bad in the world on libertarianism.

Que?

You can go through life without forcing people to live you in the way others deem appropriate.

Sure, this is very much influenced by things I read when I was shivering in my one bedroom apartment near Newport News Shipbuilding.

I think I actually didn’t have a TV much of the time I lived there.

But I think that was where I read How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World. (Apologies for the Amazon link; it was something that came up easily in my didn’t-used-to-be-evil branded browser.)

But it brings me to my point. I’m going out of my way to avoid giving them any of my money. Same goes, now, for FedEx, and Nike, based on what they’re doing to the Redskins.

You are allowed to make your own choices. There’s nothing wrong with that. Believing that, also, isn’t a problem.

But you might not make the right choices!!1!

Okay.

Since I might choose to make decisions you don’t like gives you the right to have me killed?

Got it.

This is where I’d normally start talking about how I’m a bad person for drilling down the political ideology to its base level.

But, no, I’m not.

If you don’t want to associate with me because of my choice not to force you to behave in the methods I view as appropriate. Well, okay. Come at me, bro.

On second thought, don’t. Leave me alone, even if it bothers the shit out of you.

I am about writing. Given that it’s Saturday, I’m not going to fight it today.

The big news this week is that the Democratically-controlled house want to admit the 90%+ Democratic city of DC into the union as a state. Two more party votes in the Senate, so it has to happen.

Uh.

No, it’s a Federal district. It’s not a state.

I would say that if “taxation without representation” is just an issue, let the wards with land borders join the adjacent localities.

So the richest parts of the city can be part of the gem of local governance that is Montgomery County (I say that because it seems like every time you see a stupid local ordinance on the news, if it’s not out of Florida, it’s out of “MoCo.”), while the other parts can join Prince George’s County.

The DC bars and restaurants would have a great time with MoCo’s stupid liquor controls. Then, what of the bars where you can smoke inside?

Speaking of smoking, perhaps it’s due to a few things I’ve watched lately, but I’ve been really craving a glass of Scotch with a cigar.

Like it’s 1999 again. I think that was reinforced by forcing myself to watch The Matrix again. I think a lot of that might have stemmed from seeing the FCC chair put up a red/blue pill reference on Twitter.

The movie isn’t better with age.

But I think it does speak to what’s going on with politics.

There’s many different views.

And that’s a problem.

It’s incredible listening to various people wedded to the red/blue dichotomy in the corporate press.

My frustration is further exacerbated by listening to various MS podcasts, where there’s a very firm push to “take the blue pill.”

And this is where I’d normally take off on my I’m-a-bad-person-because-I-choose-to-reject-a-binary-world.

Part of it, too, may have been from listening to this the other day. I’d listened to the guest’s interview with Thaddeus Russell. Russell was talking about his incredible interview with his interview with Hotep Jesus. He talked about the all-or-nothing attitude with many of these radical movements who’ve been able to rebrand themselves as of late.

No. Some of this shit is just incredibly nuts.

You can actually take pieces of the whole, and come to something for yourself.

You don’t have to swallow one of two pills.

That’s tough for some people to understand.

And, no, it doesn’t make me a horrible person that I refuse to play the binary game.

---

I’d forgotten what I wanted to write about here, but I do remember, now.

It does speak a bit to the blue-versus-red pill argument, however.

I was listening to a podcast where Dr. Jorgensen discussed what she’d do with the FDA.

“We had about 60 American companies making testing kits and the FDA only approved two,” she said in the final Libertarian Party debate. “What the president should have done was use the Emergency Powers Act and say, ‘FDA, you only have to prove safety, not efficacy. Get these kits out there.’”

Citation

The MS “disease modifying therapy” I’m on could hardly be considered “safe.”

One possible side effect of taking TYSABRI is progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML). PML is a rare brain infection that usually leads to death or severe disability. Currently, there is no known treatment, prevention, or cure for PML.

Tysabri site

Obviously, that’s concerning. What would I get during a not-as-good-as-even-Medicaid-for-all system?

Ugatz.

The IV steroids are “safe.” For the most part. They’re also cheap.

And there I go again not accepting all of one answer, which, of course, makes me a bad person.

Whatever.

I did manage not to write last week, so there’s that.

I’m taking a break from my oh-so-fascinating protection for a bogus IT certification racket.

I’m listening to The Fifth Column taking a break from barely-functional labs.

Woohoo. I know how to fire up Wireshark on a Win10 VM!!1!

Getting the promised gift to TFC is proving more difficult than I originally thought. Virginia’s screwed-up liquor laws don’t help.

But I’m stumbling along as well as could be expected.

All that said, I am exhausted. Perhaps that’s due to expiration of my Tysabri does,. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that I’ve had odd sleep patterns the past week or so.

I did run the Jitsi meeting last night. I’d never done that before for the HR Geeks folks last night. The only other meeting I’d ever done was talking to my mom on Mothers’ Day.

The webcam I’d ordered in mid-April for these meets finally showed up earlier this week, too. Enjoy the quarantine at the Port of Los Angeles.

Maybe I’ll remember later exactly what I meant to write about.

So what do I do? I write. Just like every day in November.

I’ve been trying to absorb the stuff going on nationwide the past couple of nights.

There’s a fascinating understory going on; maybe the destructive protests haven’t been locals.

NBC reported this, but it doesn’t fit Chuck Todd’s narrative that everything that’s bad in the world is the result of the guy in the Oval Office, so whatever the AG said is, um, unsupported.

If only there was someone with a reporting staff who could dig in, and find out whether it’s true.

But missing the bigger picture.

Like a single pixel on something spit out by a dot matrix printer. If you focus in on the one point, you can see it, but miss the larger message that you could see just be zooming out a bit. Saw this this morning about a place where I used to work. Well, I worked as a contractor for them, because they, along with the effort to get rid of old people, didn’t want to hire anybody full-time.

What the company there did, and what several other companies are doing, is just hiring contractors. No benefits to pay. No paid time off. The Winter holidays are coming up? Enjoy working less, and making less money.

At least the last place I worked that did that paid Federal holidays. Well, most of them.

A bit more subtle than Chunk.

It’s not as subtle as what the previous administration did with the Russian Collusion story, but it’s similar. I do think Mr. Grenell is actually on top of what’s going to be happening this year.

But the “deep state” was feeding false stories about Russian collusion to the various parts of the media. You know, the ones we’re supposed to trust. Still find that lack of trust dangerous, Chuck?

I’m thinking about this because I’m paying my protectiondoing my Continuing Education for a cert that’s needed to allow me to keep working.

How much could people hide by jamming these incredibly expensive security systems with chaff? Oh, but it came from $trusted_source, so it has to be correct.

But what if it’s not? How much time and money have you wasted trying to solve a problem that isn’t there, was never there, and probably won’t be in the future?

Obligatory uDict definition.

I remember begin a young broadcaster, and being told about needing to “hear the smile in your voice.”

I’m starting to think that that’s probably a part of my issue with this one MS podcast I’ve been listening to. The host just sounds pissed off a lot of the time. The very serious sound effects and bumper music don’t do anything to change that perception.

When he was discussing something about which he was actually excited today, that did come across, and he didn’t sound like such a wokescold.

Speaking of that, I still glimpse at what’s going on with Nextdoor, a.k.a. Twitter for old people. Some of what you get there is illustrative of the Karen attitude so heavily-represented near where I’m living. I mean, we’re no Montgomery County, Maryland, but there’s a lot here.

Hose Karen is the worst Karen. pic.twitter.com/qmLGCYWR9F

— The Red-Headed Libertarian ™ (@TRHLofficial) May 19, 2020

I’ve long referred to Maryland as “DPRM,” as a nod to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. After more consideration, however, I’m thinking that “MDDR” might be more appropriate; Maryland Deutsche Demokratik Republik might be more appropriate.

The Karens of a place like MoCo would probably like the Stasi’s reporting tools.

Happy eighteenth birthday to my employer.

Trolling around the series of tubes today, and I stumbled across this. Nonono; you need regulations like that, or people will die. For reasons I can’t find, immediately, that’s been floating through my scarred brain the past few weeks.

Also trying to pay attention with some interest into the LP nomination discussion yesterday. My oldest friend asked me what I thought about Vermin Supreme. Que? Well, as far as I know, he’s not out on a boat trying to avoid various authorities.

But, if anything, the longer that things go on with this COVID-19 stuff, the less I confidence I have in government as a rule.

*shrug*

No, that’s not a black helicopter that’s outside my window, it’s just the A/C unit.