Nec Hoc Nec Ilud

* "Trump makes dubious pick for deputy national security adviser:"

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* "Trump's opportunities for conflict of interest may be...:"

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* "A possible Trump kleptocracy?:"

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* "Trump's threat to democracy:"

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* "Trump stock stake in DAPL pipeline could guide decisions:"

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* "Trump picks Obamacare foe for HHS: NBC Source:"

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* Is Donald Trump holding some sort of secret betting pool on which of his advisors/cabinet members will be the most incompetent/first to be indited? Inquiring minds want to know.

* Every time I hear that audio clip of Donald Trump bragging about his Two Towers in Istanbul, this is what I picture in my head. http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/153807263617/every-time-i-hear-that-audio-clip-of-donald-trump

* I need to say something about the conversation around how to protest the proposed unconstitutional Muslim registry. I love the idea of people who are not Muslim registering. I love the idea of so many people registering that the list becomes meaningless. It is a good tactic and a brave tactic. It is incredibly valiant that so many Jews have stood up and said they would register. You know what's not okay though? Demanding Jews or Native Americans or trans people or black people or members of other groups that are the most in danger under a Neo-NAZi fascist regime register, which is something I'm seeing a lot of right now. There is a difference between volunteering and being pressured into it, most especially for people being directly targeted or likely to be targeted by Trump/Pence. For us, it needs to be an individual decision and no one is entitled to our sacrifice against our will. Yes, I'm thinking about it, just as I did when they were talking about re-instituting McCarthy era loyalty oaths for teachers after 9/11. (I decided then that I was okay losing my job over it, though it never came to it. I also decided to edit the pledge of allegiance for my self as I was required to say it every morning all eight years I taught. I went with "I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, and to the Republic, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Most people didn't notice, though I'd spot the occasional kid catching me at it. Not one ever asked, though they did look thoughtful.). I am leaning towards it, but I am not comfortable with lying or denying my own beliefs in any context, so it's hard for me, and I do not know if I will be able to deny my beliefs even on paper if it comes to the point. I am giving myself a little time to live with it, and there is time to decide. Given the literal years I suffered for the truth in some pretty horrible ways, I physically revolt when required to lie out of character. (I can be wrong. I often am, alas. I can misstate by accident, and even that makes me queasy and I have to explain immediately I notice it what I actually meant. I can deflect. I can stay tangential true things. I can say true things in a misleading way. I can act and say things that are not true while in character, but even on the rare occasions I want to lie in even the most trivial way, IE: So and so isn't home when they are, it's... not possible. It's very much a trauma thing, and not one I particularly mind in every day life, so not one I've bothered trying to take apart, they way I have with a whole host of triggers and behaviors specific to most of a decade of abuse. "Can't lie" sounds a trivial thing to get over, but it's really not, because it's a core identity trait thing. I think I've thought of a way around it depending on how the registry is done, but I literally can't guarantee that I can bring myself to do it, because I have choked before.

In any case, you know who should be the first people lining up to register? Straight white cisgendered able bodied Christians, because it's you folks who decided to do these terrible things in cold blood, knowing full well the sorts of things likely to result. If you didn't vote for him, odds are your friends or family or coworkers voted to literally kill as many of us as possible. This is very clearly a white people problem, and the people who are least in danger even if they put their names on a Muslim registry are the straight white cisgendered able bodied Christians. So you get in line first, and don't be hassling people who are liable to be on the front lines one way or another as we all individually make our decisions. I suspect a lot of us will sign up if it comes to it.

I hope I will, but bravery before the fact counts for nothing. I do the safety pin because that is exactly the sort of bravery I have. I do have a long ass history of confronting harassers in public. I do have a history of standing with someone being hassled and standing up to the harasser. I do have a history of physically interposing myself between a group of big scary threatening white men and someone they are trying to intimidate. I do have a history of giving no fucks if I get hurt. I can make the promise to keep doing that because a few decades of doing that under my own power including twice in the last few months tells me it is something I can do. I have no idea what I'll in the end be able to break or bend something integral to who I am even though I absolutely believe it is the right thing to do. I can't tell you if I can do it until it is done.

In the mean time though, go ahead and pressure the fuck out of the folks with the most privilege, but can we stop being jerks in particular to Jews and trans folk and people of colour and people with serious mental and physical disabilities, etc. who are already under massive stress and possibly deadly threat from the incoming regime? Because it's not helping. Not every one can do all the things. It's like I said in my post election things about dividing up the work that needs to be done to resist: we need to divide things up according to our strengths, and have a realistic idea of what we can handle. A lot of people with disabilities can't do marching and shaming us because of our hard limits is a serious asshole maneuver. Demanding someone with social anxiety to do the safety pin thing is flat out cruel. Demanding trans people, particularly trans people of colour, take on even more risk on top of the danger of just existing while trans... yeah. Demanding Jews get in line first for the Muslim registries... yeah. You see what I mean. It is incredibly powerful when people DO volunteer, but there is volunteering and there is pushed. Let's try to be mindful of other people's limits and other people's risk. I know it's hard, especially when we are all scared we will literally be killed, but turning on each other isn't the answer. We DO need to stick together and support each other, and part of that is empathy.

* "The 'alt-right' is just white supremacy:"

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* "Dakota Access Pipeline protesters face deadline:"

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* How to Call the President to complain about the militarized reaction to the Water Protesters: http://browngurlwfro.tumblr.com/post/153797241183/thepryncess-there-are-militarized-police-along

* "Roald Dahl Takes One for England:"

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* "The Election Divide Continues:"

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* "President-Elect Trump's Conflicts of Interest:"

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* I love the way the lights make the crystal glow. Ah, Gothmas. Solstice decoration pics: http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/153797432524/i-love-the-way-the-lights-make-the-crystal-glow

* Tavy only discovered the whole sitting on his human during lung time for pets and/or naps in the last month. He has already decided he likes it so much that he gets rather grumpy when I am on the sofa for any other reason (such as food or paperwork) and will poke at me in hopes that I will hurry up and do my lung treatment. When foiled, he crouches next to me and glares.

In other news: the office colony is now eating and behaving normally, so I have hopes of them surviving.

* Do people still use the phrase "So good looking I wouldn't kick her/him out of bed for eating crackers?”

* "The Ironboors are made of Salt and Snores - The Fandomentals:" https://www.thefandomentals.com/ironborn-s6-retrospective/

* The VVitch: This film is stunning. Visually, it just blows me away, from the painterly use of lighting and composition of so many shots; to the bleak, spare period accurate design; to the details of belts and stitching in the costume design. It is clear that everyone involved really cared about making this look as Right and period accurate as they possibly could and it really shows. The people making this clearly made it with both love and precision and it shows. This is likely as close as anyone can really get on film to that specific place and time. (The film maker owns up to a few things like the house being a bit too large, too many candles, and the goats being the wrong species in the extras and explains exactly why those changes were necessary. The fact that he is apologizing for not importing wild goats from New Zealand tells you how deep the research is and how hard he thought about the tiny handful of compromises he had to make in response to the reality of filming. Seriously, I may be in love. I want to see him make more films this way). I wish I'd had a chance to see it on the big screen, but even on the small it is gorgeous.

This doesn't even touch how alarmingly good the acting is, all realism and nuance in the quieter scenes, the excellent accent work, and the way they managed to shoot something this good with goats and child actors, both notoriously difficult, and them having to hide implications and subtext from the three younger cast members. One of the real strengths of the film is the willingness to allow silence and stillness and the slower pace of the character building scenes take the time they need to, to let the actors take the time they need to, in a way that fit the spare nature of the setting. Anya Taylor-Joy brought a beautiful complexity and ambiguity to Thomasin. Ralph Ineson's William is conveys so much in face and tone and stillness.
Kate Dickie brings to Catherine a naturalistic intensity that ratchets up and things unravel punctuated by moments of tenderness. I wish she'd been allowed to be this good as Lysa Arryn, but that script was nowhere close to this good.

Which brings us to the story itself. I love that the script plays fair with the religion and folk beliefs of the period. It doesn't trivialize what the characters think and feel. It doesn't try to modernize or lampshade the grimness of that particularly type of period Calvinism, nor does it dumb it down. The intellectual weight and the intensity of emotion were all pitch perfect. I kept thinking about Sarah Vowell's wordy Shipmates and both the seriousness of the theological arguments and the way those banishings were often a sort of passive death sentence. I like too that I could pick out the exact period accurate folkloric traditions the film was using. Look, I'm firmly in the Salem witches were innocent camp, but that doesn't stop me from recognizing the power of the archetype or the sincerity of period belief. I'd rather if someone makes a supernatural witch movie, they go with period accurate beliefs. It's a huge fucking problem with medieval witch movies too (I'm looking at you, Nicholas Cage).

I love the language of this movie as well, which in those accents range correct and natural in my ears. According to the extras, they lifted and modified a lot of it out of period sources, and it shows. The result is plain and poetic by turns as required and I was never once pulled out by it sounding wooden or odd.

It's politics fascinate me as well, but that needs more mulling. There are parts of this that are hard to watch, but it is utterly mesmerizing and worth chewing over at length.

*****

* Suicide Crisis numbers: http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/153016816845/non-us-crisis-line-list

* Victim of a Hate Crime? Report to the police first, but also report here to help the SPLC track incidents: https://www.splcenter.org/reporthate

* Trans Relief Project: http://transrelief.com/

* "Donate to the SPLC:" https://donate.splcenter.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=463

* General Charities list to help groups being targeted in Trump's America: http://lovingmyselfishard.tumblr.com/post/153111297079/charities-that-may-need-some-love-in-the-upcoming

* Where to donate to help Immigrants: http://colinfirth.tumblr.com/post/152963467726/carecen-la-center-for-community-change

* Ways to protest: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/174f0WBSVNSdcQ5_S6rWPGB3pNCsruyyM_ZRQ6QUhGmo/htmlview?usp=sharing&sle=true#

* More ways to protest "So here’s the deal:" http://the-cimmerians.tumblr.com/post/153516131819/so-heres-the-deal

* "10 ways we can help Standing Rock Indian Reservation.:" http://browngurlwfro.tumblr.com/post/153755459138/dooder-tooder-this-is-a-photo-my-friend-posted

* "List of Standing Rock Resources:" https://laughingacademy.tumblr.com/post/152671392633/list-of-standing-rock-resources

* "How to help Flint, Michigan:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/how-help-flint-michigan

* Help pay for cat food, litter, meds, medical copays: Paypal Lethran@gmail.com

* Organizations helping with the refugee crisis: http://captainofalltheships.tumblr.com/post/128790538169/an-updated-list-of-organizations-to-donate-to-help

* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We desperately need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com

* Remember how I said that there is worry the Russians might invade the Ukraine? Russian troops are holding "surprise maneuvers" on the border with Ukraine and have their military planes on alert. This doesn't mean they will necessarily invade, just that they want to be ready to and to make sure people know they can at a moment's notice. This is why this is the wrong time for the heavy handed threats that the Republicans want us to make and why the statements from the Administration are so carefully worded. This is a time for chess, not checkers, as it were, and the President's light and nuanced hand on the foreign policy tiller is the right approach if we want to give the Ukrainians time to work things out for themselves instead of Putin imposing his solution.


* Just a reminder that while most of us are really angry at Putin and the Russian government, the Russians living here in the states are not the enemy. They left Russia for a reason. They chose to live here and are not in anyway responsible for the state encouraged violence over there. The "Russians" running the little shop near where you live might not even be Russian. If you live in my part of the country, most of the people US born people assume are Russian are Ukrainians who experienced extremely brutal religious oppression under the Soviets on top of all the pretty horrible things inflicted on citizens of the Ukraine under the Soviets. (Google "Stalin" and "Ukraine)." They are here because they are terrified a change of government will have them literally starving to death, rounded up to be sent to camps, or shot. It is a realistic fear, because the old people in particular had all those things happen to friends and family. They are not the enemy; they are refugees. Yes, they speak Russian, because they had to learn it and many are tri or quatra-lingual, but they are not Russian. It is unfair and out right appalling to target boycotts or worse yet hate speech or hate crimes at people who were oppressed by or are actively fleeing Putin's cruelty and oppression (as is the case with a recent flood of LGBT refugees and their families in some parts of the country).

Please, folks, let's try to be decent to each other, okay?

* How can you tell Republicans are lying to you when they say they care about the deficit? Republicans are arguing that it's necessary to raise the deficit by 74 billion dollars over the next ten years to achieve the national good of stripping the healtrh care coverage from one million people who work for a living. Imagine how much you have to hate the American people to do this terrible things to workers.

* "Health Care Horror Hooey:" http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/24/opinion/krugman-health-care-horror-hooey.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=1

"When bad things happen to imaginary people."

* "Military Spending Cuts and How They Are Being Distorted:" http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/military-spending-cuts-and-how-they-are-being-distorted/

* "The New Normal: School Shootings as Industrial Disaster:" http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2014/02/24/the-new-normal-school-shootings-as-industrial-disaster/

* "Darkening of Melting Arctic Amplifying Global Warming from CO2:" http://www.juancole.com/2014/02/darkening-amplifying-warming.html

* If you know any Democrats in Texas, please forward. "Texas Dems: Don't Vote For This Woman:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2014/02/texas-dems-dont-vote-for-this-woman.html

* "TN lawmakers threaten to cancel all campus speakers statewide over Sex Week ‘perversion’ :" http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/24/tn-lawmakers-threaten-to-cancel-all-campus-speakers-statewide-over-sex-week-perversion/

* "The Privilege of Assuming It’s Not about You:" http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/02/25/the-privilege-of-assuming-its-not-about-you/

* "President Obama's Statement About Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill:" http://www.transgriot.blogspot.com/2014/02/president-obamas-statement-about.html

* "Persecuted for righteousness’ sake:" http://jlake-feed.dreamwidth.org/410267.html

* "Tim Gunn, Trans Models Have Curves:" http://transgriot.blogspot.com/2014/02/tim-gunn-trans-models-have-curves.html

* "Gay-Ban - Arizona's Preemptive Strike:"

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* "The Empire Cuts Back:"

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* While I've never been a fan of either Clinton, I have found the misogyny aimed at her for decades appalling. Colbert really nails it here. "Fox News on Hillary Clinton's Age:"

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* I am finding the Dork Tower look at asshole Geek men policing women in fandom interesting. For Example: http://dorktowerfeed.livejournal.com/376287.html

* "Gurney Journey: Aardman Animals Talk Art:" http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2014/02/aardman-animals-talk-art.html

* "It Looks Like An Ordinary Piece Of Wood. But Trust Me, It's Going To Blow Your Mind In A Minute.:" http://www.viralnova.com/crazy-carvings/

* "Classic literature in Lego in pictures:" http://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2014/feb/19/classic-literature-lego-in-pictures-dracula-romeo-and-juliet?CMP=twt_fd#/?picture=430115566&index=0

* Troll Hunter is a slow starter, like a whole lot of "found footage" things, but weirdly compelling and dryly amusing.

* "I saw a sea monster on the way to work today. :" https://twitter.com/greenwickpress/status/438356518216290304/photo/1