Musings of an anarchist misfit
Published at 20:20 on 28 May 2014
Once you start getting these in the mail, you are officially “old”.
Actually, I’m surprised it took that long. I’ve heard they typically show up before one’s 50th birthday. This didn’t show up until after my 51st.
And I plan on joining, because the AARP is one of the more effective lobbying organizations fighting against proposals to gut Social Security.
Published at 09:20 on 22 May 2014
You’ve helped to cement my move out of your city that I made last year by helping to ensure that I won’t be moving back any time soon, thanks to making the sort of housing that would appeal to me illegal to build.
I’ve never really been able to understand this Seattle mindset that there’s basically only two types of housing that residents should be offered: large houses on large lots and apartments/condos crammed up against busy streets. And if you don’t want (or cannot afford) the former (what’s wrong with you, weirdo?), then you deserve the latter. It’s an attitude that befits a neurotic suburb, not a major city.
Oh well, good riddance.
Published at 22:56 on 12 May 2014
Despite the claims of the techno-futurists, taxis still very much serve useful purposes that services like Uber and Sidecar cannot fill.
Two more examples is anonymity and universal access. In order to use the new ride-sharing services you must own a smart phone and register ahead of time. No anonymity, and if you don’t have an expensive phone (or if you’re traveling internationally and don’t want to shell out for a local phone contract or pay extortionate roaming fees) you’re SOL.
I have no particular loyalty to the taxi industry. Find a way to replace it that preserves the above things and I’m all for it. Until then, however, there is a public interest in preserving taxi service.
Published at 12:39 on 3 May 2014
I made a strong and generous offer on a condo that actually met most of my standards yesterday. It was not accepted.
So be it. It’s a competitive market for buyers, so I’m willing to make strong offers promptly. I am not, however, willing to be a seller’s doormat.
This particular seller wanted an open-ended rent-back at generous terms (basically, I’d run a slight loss while she was my tenant). If that’s the sort of crap I have to agree to in order to become a homeowner in today’s market, I don’t want to be one.
Mind you, I’m not giving up quite yet. I’m still keeping an eye on the market and will make offers on other suitable properties as they become listed.
But if I keep running into stuff like this, forget it. Ownership is merely a tool, not an end goal. Other tools exist.
Published at 13:45 on 2 May 2014
Here’s some comments on this gallery of photos released by the Establishment media. I hope they don’t add or delete pictures and thereby change the numbering. I suppose I could have mirrored them here, but that would have taken time, particularly if I had mirrored the captions (which are truly required as part of this critique).
No. 3. This is missing the context of what happened. The “superheroes” decided to first attack the protesters (myself amongst them) without warning or any apparent provocation. Note the partial view of the red “superhero” 3/4 of the way up and left of center; he had just charged without warning. The purple one was being tackled before he could likewise charge. I know; I was there. That’s my bicycle in the picture.
No. 7. Note the passive voice, as if the pepper spray suddenly materialized as a force of nature out of nowhere, sprayed by nobody.
No. 15 is actually pretty fair; it talks about “a protester” smashing the window, not “an anarchist”. Yes, there were many anarchists in that crowd, but that march had no political affinity test one had to pass to be eligible to participate in it, and a fair number had decided on the spur of the moment to participate. Absent a positive identification of the individual who damaged that window, and his or her political orientation, it’s not possible to say if it was smashed by an anarchist or not. I assume here that the window actually was smashed, and not damaged in some previous incident well prior to the march; perhaps I am being overly generous in my assumption.
No. 18. A “tussle”. No, he attacked without warning.
No. 22. Note the street sign in the background: 6th Avenue. That’s west of the Convention Center, where the attack pictured in No. 3 took place. The march was heading west at the time. So that photo was post-attack, an attack by the individual being flipped off. Offensive though it may be, a raised middle finger is not a violent act and is in fact protected free expression, and the context in which that gesture was made means it actually showed a degree of restraint (an obscene gesture was made, instead of a retaliatory attack).
No. 31. But why were the media censored? They don’t say. Answer: corporate media have shared their full footage with law enforcement in the past. So their cameras are effectively police spy cameras.
No. 41. This guy looks more “stunned” than “enraged” to me. If he was “screaming” wouldn’t his mouth be wide open? Instead he appears to be biting his lip in restraint.
No. 46. This caption actually appears to be fair. So far as I could tell, the driver of that car was not acting aggressively; it merely got caught up in the march (such things are bound to happen on unpermitted marches). I didn’t like the jumping on cars bit myself. (I also didn’t see much of it; basically this once and that was it.)
Published at 07:00 on 2 May 2014
I ran an experiment of sorts yesterday.
I deliberately chose to be as visibly anarchistic as possible (in the sense of what popular stereotypes about anarchist dress and mannerisms are), yet at the same time to scrupulously avoid causing any sort of lasting damage to any living beings or inanimate objects, and to refrain as much as possible from participating in any physical conflicts or clashes.
You see, I normally don’t dress all in black at demonstrations. It’s something I regard as trite (and, face it, it is trite). So yesterday’s experiment was to get an idea, by personal experimentation, of just how much repressive measures are directed against anarchists per se, as opposed to any unlawful conduct by individual anarchists. I don’t normally find myself the least bit personally at risk, even at demonstrations which are later portrayed as violent or unruly. How much of that immunity is the result of not adhering to stereotypes and thus being seen as not an anarchist and therefore not “deserving” repression?
And after narrowly avoiding getting injured or arrested in what can only be described as a brief police riot, and then again avoiding injury pretty narrowly when one of the so-called superheroes assaulted the march pretty much at random and without provocation, well, there’s the answer.
At neither time did I note any violence or property damage happening before either group attacked the march without warning (had I observed any such things, I would have physically distanced myself from them). That’s not to say that neither happened, only that neither happened near me; both conflicts were initiated not by myself or any other anarchist but by forces in opposition to us.
And note, this Seattle May Day is being reported in the media as tamer than other recent ones.
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 09:03 on 1 May 2014
But, really now, the WHO is very, very late to the game.
Things like the routine use of antibiotics in industrial agriculture should have been completely banned decades ago. Antibiotics have absolutely no place being given as routine supplements to farm animals merely because it fattens the bottom line of those raising them.
Published at 08:59 on 26 April 2014
This recipe actually works. Something persuaded me to try it over the other recipes for vegan crêpes that I found, despite it having no egg substitute whatsoever in it. The one thing to beware of is not to flip them too early; heed the comments about waiting until they are mostly dry and just starting to brown at the edges before flipping.
As for the chocolate suggestion: close, but no cigar. Right family and right latitudinal range, but wrong hemisphere and of course wrong genus and species. The perfect crêpe filling is from genus Durio, not genus Theobroma.
A big plus is that, unlike chocolate, durian is delicious just as it is: luscious, sweet, creamy, and intensely flavorful. No need to dump lots of refined sugar and vanilla into it in an attempt (never completely successful) to cover up intense bitterness. Another plus, if like me you’re a White guy in his fifties, is blowing people’s minds. You get some pretty good doses of incredulity when purchasing the requisite ingredient at an Asian market, typically an astonished “You like that?” from the clerk.
I think I’ve figured out some of the magic of durian. It’s the combination of intense flavor and intense sweetness. I have a sweet tooth, like all primates. It’s something that’s evolved to make us crave fruits, which have necessary vitamins.
Furthermore, I have personally always loved intense flavors. Candied ginger has always been one of my favorite candies ever since a little tot, when a great-grandmother gave me some in response to my pleading after my grandmother advised: “Just give him a little piece, Nana. He’ll try it, he’ll cry, and then he’ll not pester us again for it.” No such luck. I devoured it and said “More!” From then on, whenever they had tea when I was visiting, they had to share a piece of candied ginger with me. When I got a little older, I would also raid the spices and extracts cabinet and sample said goods directly because I loved how intense the flavors were.
One of my fonder elementary-school memories was when a schoolmate was attempting to play practical jokes at recess by getting his classmates to try eating whole cloves. He made the mistake of picking me as his first mark, and one of my best friends (Indonesian, and thus used to spicy cooking at home) as his second. We both knew what cloves were because we would both occasionally eat them as-is for the flavor, so we both accepted the prankster’s gifts, ate them with appreciation, and asked for seconds. This of course got the jokester thinking that maybe cloves weren’t so strong-flavored after all and maybe someone had played a joke on him by saying they were. We saw him sneak off and pop one into his mouth, followed by immediate signs of distress and pleading with a teacher to be let in early because he was “very thirsty.”
But I digress. I love both sweetness and intense flavors. I don’t know the exact mechanism by which it happens, but durian is both intensely sweet and intensely flavorful, simultaneously. That’s something that’s normally not possible (in most desserts the sweetness wins to the detriment of the flavor). It’s probably related to how durian can, unlike pretty much any other food, taste so different from how it smells (surprisingly delicate given how intensely pungent it can be). However it is accomplished, it is for me a magical combination.
Moreover, most things as sweet as durian come with a evil, nasty refined-sugar buzz as a side-effect. But durian is a natural fruit; there is no refined sugar, so there is no nasty sugar buzz. Quite the contrary: it’s high in tryptophan, so instead of a sugar buzz there’s this nice, relaxed, gentle, blissed-out feeling that lingers. And being a natural fruit it’s actually nutritious and good for you, instead of being simply empty calories.
On top of the those aspects, the consistency is right, too. Unusual for a fruit, durian is high in fat. Plus in the USA it will (alas) always be frozen and never fresh wherever you find it, so it will be very soft and mushy when thawed. So it’s naturally the consistency of custard or Boston creme filling anyhow. Perfect for using as a filling for something.
Published at 09:06 on 22 April 2014
“No nation has the right to simply grab land from another nation.” — Vice President Joe Biden
Except if the nation having the land grabbed from it is Serbia or some other nation whose government the US ruling elite doesn’t like. Then it’s perfectly fine to grab land from other nations.
Because imperialism is only okay when we do it.
Along similar lines, egging on demonstrators to storm and occupy public buildings is also only OK when we do it. If we do it, it’s promoting democracy. If someone else does it, it’s instigating a coup.
Again, because imperialism is only OK when we do it.
If imperialists didn’t have double standards, they would have absolutely no standards at all.