The past week or so at the day job has been ridiculous. Huge deadlines on a huge project that’s really too huge for the timeline it was scheduled for.
Of course, it does look like we’ll be close enough.
It also looks like it’s driving me utterly mad with stress.
So, the feed is a bit… odd. Because that’s how my brain is working (when my brain is working).
I’ll let you see for yourself.
Here’s the feed…
Yep. Up too late again, trying to catch up on non-day-job work that I didn’t get to last week (or the week before) because I was so wiped out by the day job work.
Much needed fun over the weekend, but my sleep schedule is still recovering.
Yeah, that’s the excuse I can use for at least one more day.
(We all know that the reality of it is that I’m naturally nocturnal and, left to my own devices, would rarely be up before noon and usually be going to bed around sunrise.)
Ah, well… so much stuff in the feed from the past few days. You’d best just take a scroll through it to see for yourself. (Since this is all going to be quick and haphazard as I should be asleep now… except I crashed out on the couch earlier in the night… which does exactly nothing to “fix” my schedule.)
Here’s the feed…
I spent more time than I probably should have discussing the goings on in Furguson, MO, today.
Can’t say that before yesterday I’d really ever heard of that St. Louis suburb before, but after today it’s going to be hard to forge.
You see, there’s some massive police action going on there. That’s in reaction to some massive public action–including looting and riots. And that’s in reaction to a shooting that left a black man definitely dead and a cop reported injured.
Chains of events like this aren’t all that uncommon.
It’s a symptom of the ongoing and underlying racial and economic divides we’ve got going on here. That we’ve had going on here pretty much forever.
It’s tragic all around.
First that there’s any legitimate question that an altercation with a law enforcement officer was uncalled for or that the cop’s response was out of scale. Further that pretty much any any event between white people and people of a different race will far too often set off protests and riots.
I’d like to say “It didn’t used to be this way…” But that’s not entirely true. There is a tremendous history of those in power (who have always happened to be white, and almost always male here in the United States) abusing those of different races, genders, and sexual orientations. So much so that any “event” involving a minority has to be deeply questioned and, in many communities, serves as a flashpoint for the pent up frustrations of the population.
In Fuguson, the death sparked riots (which, in and of itself is an utterly counter-productive reaction–“Let’s mess up our own town to protest the actions of the powers that be!”). Those riots sparked a highly militarized police response (which, in some cases, was definitely called for–if you’re setting things on fire and robbing stores, the cops are kind of supposed to stop that). The problem is, because the police force itself was seen as the aggressor in the ongoing tension in the town, having them show up at even peaceful gatherings looking like an occupying military force and then moving in on the crowd isn’t going to do anything but incite resistance and more distrust.
Which is exactly what’s been happening over the past four days.
It’s a problematic and unfortunate situation that has done near irreparable damage to the community in many ways. Law enforcement and those in power are going to have a very difficult climb to even get back to the strained point of tolerance they had with the residents before this all fell apart. The residents are going to have to deal with numerous issues this is inevitably causing in their own community–when neighbors of yours are burning down buildings you shop at, there’s going to be some lingering frisson there.
And then the country, not as a whole but as a divided population of “us” and “them”, has yet another example of why they shouldn’t trust those we’ve put in power. That brings us one step closer to collapse… and that helps no one get anything positive done.
Anyway, there are 70 or so back and forth exchanges, all filled with fantastic and diverse opinions attached to the articles about it in the feed. Definitely check those out.
Also, there are baby ducks swimming in a sink.
And a dancing tree.
Just to balance things out.
Here’s the feed…
The Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case creep and speculation continue.
Now there’s some rumblings among some who are supposedly more law-savvy than I am about this close bond between a corporation’s “religion” and the religion of the people who run it may be an exploitable tear in the corporate veil that protects those who run a corporation from certain financial and legal issues.
If that’s true, then that may be a semi-good thing to come from all of this.
But I’m not sure how that would all play out. It very well may end up being worse all around for everyone.
Of course, it may not matter all that much if the economy as a whole–on a global scale–pops all at once.
There are apparently some rumblings (again, from people who know a lot more about the issue at hand than I do) about how over-valued a lot of things out there in the financial and investment world are. And how little corporations (and actual people with lots of money) are investing in things. Real estate, stocks, bonds, each other… few are seeing a chance for a good return on their investment so they’re just holding on to their money.
And while that’s going on, the various central banks of various nations are, in one way or another, pumping more money into the economy… which is, of course, trickling up into these stockpiles. Because (and the article in today’s stream doesn’t touch on this idea, but it’s a pretty glaring omission) the vast majority of people don’t have investments like what they’re talking about, so all that money can only trickle up to the businesses that own and produce what the people at street level are buying.
With that money “stuck” in the cycle, it seems it’s leaving a bit of a vacuum for those who need it most while, yet again, the rich get richer. But if and when this massive series of bubbles pop, everyone’s going to lose big as everything plummets in value–including those vast storehouses of money.
Kind of terrifying.
About as terrifying as hearing that the CDC misplaced a box of smallpox sometime in the 50s. It’s okay, though… they found it. Sitting in a store room in a lab that’s been used by the FDA for the past 40 or so years.
That just leaves me wondering what the heck else has been misplaced over the decades and never missed.
Then there’s the newest revelations from the Snowden files. Seems the U.S. government did, indeed, have a whole lot of personal communications on hand that they probably shouldn’t have. How do we know? Because Snowden handed a bunch of it over to the Washing Post. So now all the officials who’ve been swearing up and down that their organizations never took and retained anything like these newly revealed documents are saying, effectively, “Okay, yeah, we had those, but they’re different! It was only a minimal violation of those people’s privacy! What Snowden’s doing with them is worse than what we did!”
Yeah, not buying the blame shifting, guys. You’re still the ones who collected it–and have been lying about it. Sure Snowden’s in the wrong, that’s not news. You’re still in more wrong overall.
Anyway, here’s the rest of the feed…