Blackcap Blog

Published at 22:23 on 1 May 2014

I’m 51 years old, I marched in both the permitted immigrants’-rights rally and the unpermitted anarchist/anti-capitalist one. I wore black and chanted anarchist slogans.

I am hardly perfect, nor in my estimation particularly effective, but I have not sold out. Quite the contrary; I’m more radical now than I was in my twenties. Not because I sought out radicalism as a goal but I kept observing the world around me and thinking fearlessly about it.

In short, I am winning.I am winning because I have not sold my life away. Yes, I have a professional job that pays well, but my career is merely something I do to get by in this world, not my identity. The high-tech salary the system pays me can buy my labor but it can’t buy me. My mind is still my own, and I do not love Big Brother.

I could write many more things about today, but this will suffice for now.

Published at 20:11 on 4 March 2014

That’s what the brouhaha between Russia and the West over Ukraine strikes me as.

Really: the country that went into Iraq in an invasion of choice, and whose purportedly “opposition” party leaders refuse to even entertain the thought of prosecuting those responsible, acting as if it has some sort of principled moral objection to imperialist land grabs? It is to laugh.

And on the other side, the country that was so purportedly upset in principle when the West grabbed a chunk of Serbia, doing basically the same thing to the Ukraine? Statecraft, thy name is rank hypocrisy.

If that uprising had toppled a pro-Western regime, you can bet that the same talking heads bleating in unison about national sovereignty would instead be bleating in unison about the need to “restore order” via military intervention.

Pay no attention to the rhetoric; the words have no meaning in any real sense. It’s just how the hyenas snarl.

Published at 08:04 on 2 March 2014

Right wingers have been getting their panties in a knot over some recent remarks by Spike Lee.

Really, where? I don’t see any racial hatred there. There’s plenty of resentment against both a colonialist mentality in more affluent and generally White newcomers, and against a disparity in the quality and level of city services in Black neighborhoods, but that’s a very different thing from asserting that some people are particularly evil or inferior simply because of their race.

It’s actually an anti-racist rant, taking offense at what genuinely does seem to be an instance of White privilege.

I’m a White guy, and I don’t feel threatened or attacked by Lee’s remarks. I can’t even see how I would be should I happen to live in one of those NYC neighborhoods that Lee mentioned. Criticized, perhaps. But being criticized and being hated or threatened are completely different things.

Published at 10:49 on 12 February 2014

This is absolutely not a surprise.

Mark my words, the tunnel part of this project will end up costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 billion, i.e. about 2.5 times the official estimate. I’ve never committed this number to writing before, but it’s what I’ve long expected, based on the historical record of tunnel megaprojects going way over budget.

Published at 08:44 on 25 November 2013

I don’t care how frustrating and unprecedented the Republican blocking of judicial nominees is, and how hypocritical the Republicans are for opposing the same nuclear option they were advocating enacting when the tables were turned.

The tables will turn again, and when that happens the Democrats will sorely regret “going nuclear” as right-winger after right-winger sails through the Senate and onto the bench.

The foolishness of the current herd mentality is so transparently obvious that it is simply staggering that so many seem unable to see it.

Moreover, it will be made all the worse because the Republicans, unlike the Democrats, are firmly committed to their ideals and willing to pursue them with full vigor, so the rightward shift by the Republican appointees will overwhelm any leftward one put in place by the Democrats.

Published at 20:46 on 15 November 2013

After electing a corporate Democrat to the mayor’s office to replace a bumbling* but at least non-corporate incumbent, Seattle elects a socialist to the City Council.

* And yes, McGinn was bumbling and incompetent. But I’d rather have someone incompetent at doing good things than someone competent at doing bad ones. Of course it’s sort of academic at this point since I’ve moved out of Seattle and have no plans to move back.

Published at 19:36 on 17 October 2013

Executive summary: It’s yet another piece of crap from Tim Eyman. Vote NO.

“WTF?” was my first impression on reading a summary of the thing.

Increase the amount of time for gathering initiative and referendum signatures? Why? It’s not as if the current time limit, which to my knowledge has worked just fine from the day the Washington State Constitution was written, is excessively onerous or anything. It’s not unusual for a measure to get enough signatures then to be shot down at the polls. If that almost never happened, then there would be basis for arguing the existing time limit is too short.

That alone had made for at least a 90% chance I’d vote NO, without having any idea who penned the measure. Or without having yet read this little gem:

The measure would provide that interfering with signature gathering for a state or local initiative or referendum is illegal. Interfering with a person trying to sign a petition, stalking a person who signs a petition, or stalking or retaliating against a person who gathers petition signatures would constitute the misdemeanor of disorderly conduct. Such conduct would be subject to the civil anti-harassment procedures available under RCW 10.14, and civil penalties. Interfering with petition signing and signature gathering would be defined to include, but not limited to, pushing, shoving, touching, spitting, throwing objects, yelling, screaming, being verbally abusive, or other tumultuous conduct, blocking or intimidating, or maintaining an intimidating presence within twenty-five feet of a petition signer or signature gatherer. Initiative or referendum petition signing and signature gathering would be legally protected on public sidewalks and walkways and all sidewalks and walkways that carry pedestrians, including those in front of entrances and exits to stores, and inside or outside public buildings.

So, let’s see now. First, if you’re circulating petitions, it’s likely you’re going to be doing so in multiple places at multiple times, particularly since the same Mr. Eyman who authored this measure pioneered the use of paid, professional signature-gatherers in Washington state. If you oppose a petition, it is likely that you will engage in counter-petitioning at multiple places and multiple times. As such, it’s likely the same counter-petitioner will end up opposing the same petitioner more than once, without any motive other than opposing the petition. But this would seem to qualify as “stalking” on the part of the counter-petitioner under I-517.

Second, there’s wording about the vague concept of “an intimidating presence within twenty-five feet,” without ever clearly defining what such a “presence” is. Is it completely in the mind of the petitioner? Does this give a hypersensitive petitioner the right to accuse any person encouraging passersby to not sign the petition of being “intimidating” if said counter-petitioner is within 25 feet?

Given that doing anything within 25 feet seems to become risky under such legislation, one would expect counter-petitioners to stay further away. If so, how on earth would one attract the attention of prospective signers without raising one’s voice? Which neatly falls into the “yelling” or “screaming” categories of prohibited conduct.

Or suppose a counter-petitioner starts out being nice and polite and mild-mannered, and is goaded into an escalating verbal battle by the petitioner (entirely possible, since counter-petitioners have no special protections under the law, only petitioners). Then once the counter-petitioner responds to an insult or a raised voice with a raised voice of his own, bam! guilty of “yelling”.

In short, I-517 would appear to be attempting to criminalize pretty much any sort of counter-petitioning whatsoever. It is simply an attempt to infringe on the freedom of speech of those who wish to oppose the signing of a petition.

Note that actually assaulting or threatening petition gatherers is already illegal under the same laws which make such conduct illegal generally. So it’s not as if a NO vote here is for legalizing actual attacks against anyone.

Make that a 100% chance of earning my NO vote.

Published at 09:02 on 13 October 2013

Shut down the government, but proclaim perks like your gym and your catered meals to be “essential” and don’t shut them down. Because obviously, the services you as a Congress critter use daily must by definition be more important than those used by the mere peasants.

Really, every support employee used by Congress should be furloughed. That means the secretaries and the janitors as well as the chefs and personal trainers at the gym. Everyone but the Capitol police — and I’m being overly generous there. But I figured I’d make my proposal truly modest, just to underscore how deep the hypocrisy of the ruling elite runs.

Let their phones go unanswered. Let their bathrooms get dirty until the Congresscritters themselves have to open up the janitor’s closet and start having to unclog and clean their own toilets.

You want to shut down “non-essential” public services? Fine. Complementary gym memberships, free catered meals, personal secretaries, and maid service are not “essential”. Most of the USA gets by just fine without any of those services, in fact.

Published at 14:59 on 11 October 2013

So, there’s this new option available where I work called a “Health Savings Account”. The one offered by my employer is actually a very generous plan. And it sucks less abjectly than the ironically named “flexible” accounts, which you have to use within a calendar year or lose, forever.

But, there’s still a whopper of a catch. In this case, it’s called “You must save your receipts. Every last one. For seven long years.”

Good heavens, I can’t even keep one week’s worth of notes on a project straight. I could not fathom what would be required to care for hundreds or thousands of slips of paper for seven long years.

And note that these aren’t pieces of letter-sized paper one gets delivered by mail; they are randomly-sized small slips that get handed to you at the pharmacy or the clinic, ones that you must not, ever, leave in your pockets when doing the laundry. You must not let one fall out of your wallet unnoticed, ever. You must not forget and leave one on the sales counter. You must not toss one in a sidewalk waste-basket by mistake. You must not leave it in the bag then toss the bag in the recycle bin. Ever. Or woe unto you if you are audited.

Obviously, there’s people in the world who are intrinsically organized. My parents, for one. When they work on a big project, every item on the desk is at a neat 90-degree angle with respect to the other items and in order, always. It’s just the way they’re wired.

It’s also just not the way I am wired. Even if I make conscious effort to organize my things during a project, within a minute or two after said effort is ended, a significant degree of chaos and disorder will have emerged. It doesn’t bug me; in fact, I never even try to achieve strict desktop order anymore. It’s just not the way I work.

Sure, there needs to be greater cost control in the medical establishment, but I’d much rather get it like, say, the Canadians do, by having a Medicare card that I can just use, with other people (you know, the intrinsically organized types) being paid to professionally do all the receipt-tallying minutia that I am personally so ill-suited to do.

And I don’t think I am the only one. Really, now, saving every last medical receipt? For seven years? This is someone’s idea of “reform?” Seriously?

Published at 08:05 on 6 October 2013

It turns out that the NSA are indeed doing the sort of efforts to compromise entry and exit nodes and do time-based analysis (amongst other attacks) that I hypothesized about. However, it seems they are having less success than I believed they would have.