Blackcap Blog

Published at 12:54 on 7 May 2021

Why did I break a paywall in that most recent post? Let me show you the pop-up that appears:

Notice how there is no one-shot option to pay a buck or two, get a site pass for a day or two (or even just access to a single page), then walk away, without any future commitment whatsoever. No, I must give them billing information and agree to be billed monthly. Sure, I may “cancel anytime,” but what that really means is that I can forget to cancel before my first month is up, and get zinged for another few months before I wake up and cancel.

Contrast that with your typical magazine selection in a store. You can take any magazine you wish, pay the price on the cover, and walk out of the store without making any further commitments. The publisher has no idea that you, personally, purchased their publication. They can not bill you in the future.

The unreasonableness of most paywalled sites can be made clear by contrast: What would a store that follows a similar policy be like? First, the magazine is behind a counter, and you are not allowed to so much as touch it by default. “No, sir, we will not hand you this magazine unless you first agree to furnish us with billing information so that we can continue billing you as new issues come out. You are of course free to cancel at any time.”

We would think that store was a pure sleaze operation, and we would be correct.

The Web needs micropayments. It needs to be easy to pay for things on a one-off, piecemeal basis, with no future commitments. It is not just newspapers and magazines that would be improved by this, either. Imagine what social networking would be like if it was easy to use on a pay-as-you-go basis: it would be based on a transaction between two parties, with much less temptation to do all the profiling and data-selling that today’s social networks depend on.

Until and unless things become less unreasonable, I and many others will continue to try and find ways to circumvent the unreasonableness.

As an aside, in many cases, circumventing paywalls really is not that hard. Business Insider, for example, relies on client-side scripting to implement its paywall, so all I had to do was launch a user agent that had no support for JavaScript, and I was in. The page looked a little odd, but the article text was still readable.

Published at 11:57 on 7 May 2021

[This is a reprint from an article behind a paywall; it will remain up so long as it is allowed. The original is here. I did some forest activism with the author some years ago, and have always regarded her as particularly thoughtful and well-informed.]

Margaret Killjoy,
Opinion Contributor
2021-04-18T13:04:00Z

It was the Pulse nightclub shooting for me. I spent hours glued to the news, shaking with anger and fear. That hate crime sent plenty of people in search of more restrictive gun laws, but it sent me and an awful lot of others in the opposite direction. Over the next few years, I started going to shooting ranges more. I took a two-day concealed carry class. Now, like millions of Americans, I’m a gun owner. Importantly, I’m part of what looks like a demographic shift in gun ownership in the US.

I’m a woman in the rural South, and I’m very visibly trans. I unintentionally find myself in the center of a culture war; the way people treat me, in cities or the countryside, has changed dramatically since Trump’s election in 2016. The stares are longer, the sneers more open. Before gender identity became so politicized in the past few years, I was a curiosity. Now, I’m a walking symbol of everything the far-right hates.

Through my activism and my art, I have found myself in the crosshairs of the local far-right. A local news outlet once ran a satanic-panic style story about one of my music videos, and the more overtly fascist groups have sent me pictures of my family alongside my license plate number and home address.

I have always supposed that my safety is something I need to guarantee for myself — that no one else was going to do it for me. Since the people who hate people like me are famously well-armed, I determined I would be as well.

It wasn’t a simple decision, nor one that I would ever recommend anyone take lightly. The risk-benefit analysis of owning a tool like a firearm must always be ongoing. Yet as I’ve become increasingly comfortable with firearms, I’ve also come to realize just how misguided most efforts at gun control truly are.

Biden’s gun control legislation is misguided

Frankly, I believe that Biden’s executive orders and proposed legislation will disproportionately affect marginalized groups, both in terms of enforcement and in terms of access to the tools of self-defense. Because the legislation does not understand the gun community, I also believe the proposed laws are a gift to the far-right’s recruitment efforts.

When people talk about “common sense gun laws,” it sure feels like they mean the opposite. Gun owners are very aware of the labyrinthine laws that surround the ownership and use of guns, how they vary state by state, and what will and won’t bring the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) down on their heads. Many attempts to make laws more “common sense” end up making them even more confusing and contradictory — and can easily criminalize people who are trying to follow the law.

Take the arm brace for example. An arm brace on a pistol allows you to shoot more accurately. In 2014, the ATF ruled that you could stabilize the brace against your shoulder, if you wanted, without the gun being considered a short-barreled rifle, which are more heavily regulated and taxed. Then in 2015, they changed their mind. The exact same legal firearm, owned by millions, would be legal if shot normally, but illegal if shot with the arm brace held against the shoulder — unless the gun owner paid a $200 tax and filed the right paperwork. In 2017, they reversed again. All this because of quibbles over the definition of a rifle, which isn’t legally concealable, whereas a pistol often is.

Now Biden wants to say people can’t have this pistol, modified with the arm brace, at all without registering it and paying potentially hundreds of dollars.

That is to say, Biden is telling millions of law-abiding Americans that they better pony up hundreds of dollars or else become criminals because of arbitrary distinctions in the length of the barrel of a gun they own. If the goal of legislation is to prevent mass shootings, calling a pistol fitted with an arm brace a rifle — and thus illegal to conceal — is the most unhelpful of legal technicalities. Shooters planning to murder a crowd of people are not concerned with the legality of how they carry their gun.

This type of legislation is a gift to far-right recruitment, which, according to leaked Telegram chats, relies on using gun rights advocacy and the fear of gun confiscation to push people further to the right. One recruitment guide listed gun control as a way to “find common ground” before introducing someone to more fringe ideas. Guns should never have become a right versus left issue.

I grew up largely outside of gun culture. My father is a Marine with a medal for marksmanship, and I shot a .22 at Boy Scout camp in middle school, but guns didn’t play any large role in my life.

When you don’t own a gun, it’s really hard to care about gun law. It doesn’t risk criminalizing you or too many people you know. We live in bubbles in the US. If you own a gun, your friends likely do too. If you don’t, your friends probably don’t. Most advocates for gun control do not understand firearms, firearm law, or firearm culture. When people tell you what to do, while making it clear they don’t have the first idea what they’re talking about, it is always going to rub you the wrong way.

I own a gun and most of my neighbors own guns. Some of them hunt. Some of them are veterans. Some of them are concerned with self-defense. My neighbors in rural North Carolina, just like my neighbors when I’ve lived in major cities, run the full gamut of political affiliations. None of them operate under the illusion that the police would keep them safe in case of an emergency. Safety comes from knowing your neighbors. Safety comes, sometimes, from being armed.

Gun ownership as a symbol

What I didn’t realize, until I was in the environment I’m in now, is the importance of the gun as a symbol for many communities. A rifle in a safe, or a handgun on a bed stand, says, “I’ll never go hungry, because I can hunt.” It also says, “I will not be a passive victim of a violent attack.” It says: “Me and the people I love are the ones who keep ourselves fed and safe.”

Taking that away from someone, or just making it even more legally complex to own a gun, will never go over well. No amount of statistics will ever outweigh the emotional and symbolic importance of that ability for self-determination. The far-right heavily leverages that symbolic weight for recruitment — perhaps more than anything else.

I’m not advocating for universal gun ownership. I don’t believe an armed society is a polite society. I also recognize that for a lot of people — maybe even most people — gun ownership makes them less safe instead of more safe

But it’s poverty, patriarchy, and racist policing that drives most gun violence, and those underlying issues are where change ought to be focused.

There’s a slogan, albeit a cynical one, that people involved in mutual aid organizing use that resonates a lot with me: “We keep us safe.”

There are people who want to hurt me for who I am, and I don’t want to let them. My safety is my responsibility. Maybe it shouldn’t be, in some perfect society, but we don’t live in a perfect society. We live in the USA.

Published at 10:15 on 5 May 2021

Which political order was stronger and more committed to democracy? Which was more willing and able to defend itself against threats? It is a common trope that the American system is stronger and more firmly established than the Weimar Republic ever was. Let us put that claim to the test by examining the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, and comparing it to the events of 6 January.

The 1923 putsch attempt did not happen in Berlin. It happened in a regional capitol, Munich. Its original aim was to settle a party leadership spat within the NSDAP (Nazi Party) by seizing control of a beer hall. The law enforcement and intelligence failures that allowed it to happen were related to planned actions at a private target in order to manipulate a private organization in a regional capitol.

The 2021 putsch attempt happened in Washington, DC. Its aim was to seize control of the national government by murdering and coercing the Vice-President and members of Congress. The law enforcement and intelligence failures that allowed it to happen were related to planned actions directed against some of the highest elected officials of the national government inside that government’s Capitol building itself, with an aim of seizing control of and manipulating the national government itself.

The 1923 putsch quickly escalated beyond its original aims, and went on to attempt a coup against the state government of Bavaria. Its first target was the Bavarian Defense Ministry. The State of Bavaria did not hesitate to vigorously defend its Ministry against the threat to it. Four soldiers and 16 Nazis were killed in the resulting struggle. The Nazis were routed and retreated in disarray.

The US government failed to defend its Capitol. Ample footage exists of Capitol Police officers passively standing by. Footage even exists of a few officers appearing to welcome the invaders. The invaders quickly routed the Capitol Police and achieved control of the Capitol.

After the routing of the putsch, Weimar Germany acted decisively against the top perpetrators, who were all arrested within a few days. They were promptly put on trial, convicted of treason, and sentenced to prison for their crimes.

After the routing of Congress, the USA has yet to act decisively against the top perpetrators. Trump, Giuliani, Hawley: none have so much as been charged. They remain free, and the mainstream news media have normalized their conduct by interviewing them as if they are part of the spectrum of normal political actors.

Yes, the chuds who followed the instigators’ lead are being prosecuted. That is inconsequential compared to prosecuting the leaders. The chuds are disposable. More of them can be found to take the place of any rotting behind bars. It is the leadership that must be disrupted.

Weimar Germany is rightly faulted by historians for failing to do enough to disrupt the Nazi leadership after the threat they posed had been demonstrated. Well, as the score stands today, the Weimar state of 1923 was strong, forthright, and robust in comparison to the present-day American one.

Maybe that will change. Maybe the Department of Justice is busily getting ready to file formal charges against the instigators. One of the faults of the Weimar prosecution was that it ended up falling flat and failing to accomplish much: the guilty served under a year of time, in a country club prison, and were promptly rehabilitated and welcomed back into the political life of the nation.

If the Department of Justice is quietly taking its time to do it right, good for them. But if not, then the American Republic is already a corpse, and we just don’t realize it yet.

Published at 23:00 on 3 May 2021

Don’t let those five yellow petals fool you: the Large-Leaved Avens is not even in the buttercup family (it is in the rose family). It is part of a somewhat obscure (to non-botanists) genus of about 50 species which are widespread throughout the world, with species native to all continents except Australia and Antarctica.

This is a plant that many may be more familiar with in seed than in flower, as those yellow flowers ripen into burs that are often found attached to clothing or fur later in the season. Indigenous peoples used its leaves to brew a diuretic tea.

There are several native and several introduced buttercup (Ranunculus) species found in this region, including a very common weedy one. More on some of those later.

Published at 09:12 on 30 April 2021

The official forecast for tomorrow, Saturday, is showery, but I just don’t see it; both of the top models are saying it should be dry. I also don’t see it being quite as warm as the official forecasts say. Those claim the high temperatures should flirt with the 60˚F mark, particularly on Sunday, but again, neither of the top models agrees with that; both are saying high temperatures should be solidly in the fifties.

I suppose I could be all wet here, because I don’t have quite the experience sanity-checking springtime modeled temperatures that I do for wintertime ones, and they may well be notorious for underestimating daytime solar warming now that sun angles are higher. But as of right now, the official forecast maxima just do not seem quite right to me.

So far as precipitation goes, I am quite confident that both Saturday and Sunday will be dry. Regarding clouds, it should for the most part be variably cloudy throughout the weekend.

Published at 22:05 on 28 April 2021

This is probably the most common violet in our woods. As the first part of its common name implies, its foliage stays green through the winter. The second part of its scientific name implies the same thing; “sempervirens,” literally “ever-living,” is often used to denote a species with evergreen foliage.

The second part of this plant’s common name implies a color other than the yellow of this violet. For some reason, actual violet-flowered violet species are in this region outnumbered by white- and yellow-flowered species.

You might also notice the Stream Violet (Viola glabella). This violet also has yellow flowers, but its leaves are thinner, slightly lighter green, not evergreen, and come to a slight point at the tip. The Stream Violet is more fond of deciduous woods (and, as its name implies, damper locations) than the Evergreen Violet. It also tends to grow taller, although “taller” is in this case relative, since no violet is what one would call a tall plant.

The flowers and young leaves of all violets are edible. In fact, one of the most delightful characteristics of the Evergreen Violet is the slight wintergreen flavor of its blossoms, which in my opinion makes it the tastiest of our native violets.

Naturally, one should not eat the flowers of any plant unless it is numerous to the degree that consuming its reproductive parts is unlikely to endanger its survival. Thankfully, the Evergreen Violet frequently occurs in great numbers and thus a little snacking on it is often within the bounds of ethical use.

Published at 12:21 on 26 April 2021

The Washington State Legislature passed an impressive array of bills on a variety of progressive wish-list topics, but one thing they did not pass was any sort of draconian gun control legislation.

Gun legislation was limited to one common-sense measure banning open carry of firearms at or near a political demonstration. Leftists are already thoroughly — and often aggressively — disarmed by the cops at demonstrations, anyhow, so all this amounts to is a legislative order to be more balanced and to target the righties who show up openly packing heat.

As a leftist who supports gun rights, this is encouraging. Our numbers might be small, but this indicates we are a decisive minority, and that our opposition to draconian gun laws probably helped doom them, by tipping the scales just enough to make them political non-starters.

Published at 08:39 on 25 April 2021

Time for another quiz: What do the above plants, specifically the seeds of these plants, have in common?

The answer is ants. Both bear seeds which have an attached oily appendage that is attractive and nutritious to ants, who tend to carry the seeds for some distance before detaching the appendage and returning to their nest with it. This is actually quite a common characteristic, particularly in forest understory species, and has evolved independently many times in the plant kingdom. It is a particularly common trait in the hardwood forests of Eastern North America, which have many more species of these “ant plants” than we do here.

Trilliums in particular often seem to decline in abundance in woods near urban areas with higher amounts of human impact. Those same woods tend to no longer host populations of our native Western Thatching Ant (Formica obscuripes). These red-and-black ants build large anthills of forest debris, and are themselves significantly larger than most introduced ants. It is my theory that these ants, being larger, do a better job of dispersing ant-dispersed seeds for the simple reason that they are capable of carrying them for longer distances.

Both the Pacific Bleeding Heart and the Western Trillium are presently in bloom in our woods.

Pacific Bleeding Heart

This is a member of a small genus of plants, all of which have oddly-shaped, bilaterally-symmetric flowers. Indigenous peoples made limited herbal use of this plant, and such experimentation is not recommended, as all species in this genus are quite toxic.

The common garden Bleeding Heart (Dicentra spectabilis) is a close relative of this plant. If you head east across the Cascades in the spring, you might encounter the related Steer’s Head (Dicentra uniflora). If you head south to the Columbia Gorge, you might see the Dutchman’s Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria). This latter species has an unusual distribution, being found for the most part in eastern and central North America, but with some disjunct populations in the Columbia Basin.

Western Trillium

This is one of about 50 species of trilliums worldwide; like the Pacific Bleeding Heart it is the only member of its genus found in this area. It is by far the most common trillum in the Western United States.

It is generally a bad idea to pick our native wildflowers, and trilliums in particular are set back more than the average plant by having their flowers picked, for the simple reason that picking a trillium involves destroying the entire above-ground parts of a plant. This is quite the serious setback for an organism that produces but three leaves and one flower per season. It is likely that picking as much as (or more than) the lack of suitable ants for seed dispersal figures in how woods nearer “civilization” tend to have fewer trilliums.

If you explore the woods south of Olympia, and you are lucky, you may spot the Sessile Trillium (Trillium chloropetalum), which has narrower petals and whose flower is not held above the leaves on a stalk. Yet more trillium species are found as one heads further south into Southern Oregon and California.

Published at 07:27 on 23 April 2021

We sort of won the lottery last weekend: a completely sunny, warm one. In fact, if you are a sun-lover we won the lottery for nearly a fortnight.

Well, that “lucky” streak is about to end quite decisively. It is looking like the temperature on Saturday might struggle to reach the mid-fifties Fahrenheit. Quite a change from the “spring tease” we have recently been experiencing. Or more precisely, the rainy and chilly relapse is itself part of that tease.

Fire managers do not consider this recent warm and dry stretch to be good luck; it has done a frighteningly good job of drying things out. There was in fact a grass fire near Chilliwack last week, and there have already been red flag (i.e. extreme fire danger) warnings issued in Oregon.

While warm and dry spells are not unusual in April, this one has been astoundingly warm, and in particular it has been astoundingly dry. It is the low dew points that have done as much to dry things out as have the warm temperatures.

It is my feeling that the anomalous nature of this warm spell is probably related to global warming; however, that is only a hunch and it will take further data to establish the trend and settle the question.

Enemies of taking action on the climate crisis are fond of pointing such things out; however, it is critical to keep in mind that settling such questions and the issue of whether or not to take action now are two different matters. Although it is not possible to state the exact nature of the disruption that climate change will cause, it is still quite clear that odds are extremely high there will be significant disruption of some sort, thus common prudence dictates taking action so as to minimize those consequences.

It feels tedious to have to point the above out, but having to do so is simply a natural consequence of living in a political system badly divorced from obvious reality.

Anyhow, I hope everyone enjoyed how warm the last weekend was, because the coming one certainly will not be.

Published at 10:55 on 21 April 2021

Cottonwood leaves are unfolding and scenting the air with the fragrance of their balsam. The ground under our cottonwood trees is also littered with bud scales sticky with that same fragrant balsam. Indigenous peoples used the balsam to prepare salves and ointments; this tree is part of a small group of related poplar species that produce such balsam.

The Black Cottonwood has something in common with the the Bigleaf Maple, Red Alder, Douglas-Fir, Western Hemlock, Western Red Cedar, and Pacific Madrone. Can you guess what it is?

If you guessed that it is the largest species of its genus, you were correct. Our climate is favorable to the development of large trees, and has selected for them across multiple families and genera.

Like most poplars, this tree has something of a bad reputation for invasive roots that break up pavement and invade pipes. Such traits will likely serve the this region well when our civilization suffers the inevitable demise it is hurtling itself towards; paved surfaces are not very useful to organisms other than civilized humans, and many species will benefit by their return to more productive use.

Many people are surprised to learn that the Black Cottonwood is not our only native poplar. The Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) is also native to the Bellingham area; the Cordata neighborhood in particular has quite a lot of them. Far from being only a Rocky Mountain tree, aspens are in fact the most widely-distributed tree in North America, found from Mexico to Alaska and the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Compared to the Black Cottonwood, the Quaking Aspen has smaller leaves which emerge later in spring, are a lighter green, and much more prone to fluttering in the slightest breeze. Aspens also have lighter bark and more frequently reproduce asexually by sending up suckers from their roots; the latter trait means they typically occur in groves. As with the balsam poplars, the aspens form yet another small, related group of poplar trees; our aspen is a close relative of the aspens of Europe and Asia.

Now that I have mentioned poplars, someone is sure to chime in about how much their seeds trigger their allergies. Actually, it is unlikely that cottonwood seeds would do such a thing; their “fluff” consists of almost pure cellulose, which is not typically considered to be an allergen. Instead, blame grass pollen, whose concentration typically peaks at the same time that cottonwoods are dispersing their seeds.