Blackcap Blog

Published at 09:58 on 13 March 2024

In quotes only because it, and not the Israeli offensive that provoked it, will end up being labelled “terrorism” in the Establishment media. Because of course this will happen. “Terrorism” is, and always has been, a subjective label, used for propaganda purposes to delegitimize  violence with which one disagrees.

And yes, I have used the term in these pages before. Which, yes, means I was posting propaganda to delegitimize violence with which I disagreed. Because of course I post propaganda here. Pretty much everyone with a set of political beliefs (which means pretty much anyone who cares about things political) makes propaganda.

Propaganda per se is not evil or immoral. What is dishonest is to paint propaganda as if it were impartial news.

But I digress. A big new round of acts of political violence on the part of the Arab and Muslim world, particularly the Palestinian subset of it, against the West, particularly Israel and the USA, is coming.

Why wouldn’t it be, seeing as how brutalized Gaza has been in recent months? I really can’t think of any examples of comparable brutality that have passed without further cycles of retribution to some degree. Anyone who believes Israel’s disproportionate retaliation for the events of October 7th will be the final word in what is now a near century-long ongoing conflict is a fool.

And it seems as if the intelligence community, whatever its faults, is not run by fools. So it’s hardly just me that can see it.

Published at 09:50 on 3 March 2024

Really, it is hard to call this anything but pure, unvarnished barbarism. Probably the most damning part of the article is this bit:

Dr Husam Abu Safyia, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, said the majority of the injured taken there had gunshot wounds in the upper part of their bodies, and many of the deaths were from gunshots to the head, neck or chest.

So they deliberately opened fire on starving civilians and shot to kill. Pure barbarism.

And I think it is important to use the b-word to refer to what the Netanyahu regime is doing. That term has historically been used as part of gaslighting propaganda by Western nations to justify their own imperialist barbarism, by accusing those they are “civilizing” as being saved from it.

And Zionism is hardly exempt from this. From Theodor Herzl’s 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State):

We should there [in Palestine] form a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.

Needless to say (but I have to say it, else some stooge for Israeli barbarism might bring it up) “but October 7th” is not a valid answer to this. Yes, what Hamas did on that day was barbarism, too. So what? As I wrote last November two wrongs don’t make a right.

Israeli barbarism is now causing more death and suffering than Palestinian barbarism ever did. It is the greater problem, and it is logical to spend more political energy on addressing it.

And it is barbarism. If the b-word fits, use it.

Published at 09:53 on 1 March 2024

One of the things I did when packing up and cleaning out in Bellingham was listen to NPR. You see, I live just below a ridge to my south, so my home is blocked by that ridge from receiving FM radio signals from the USA. It’s one of the mildly annoying features of my home.

One of the things I heard was a segment from On Point about the problems some US military barracks are having with mold infestations. So far, so good: the government is responsible for the housing needs of those enlisted to serve, and it is a dereliction of duty to fail to supply safe, hygienic housing.

The problem comes at the end when privatization was sold as a silver bullet. Not study to uncover the root causes of the problem. Not spending money to exterminate the mold and rectify those causes. Privatization.

Changing the ownership of a mold-infested building does absolutely nothing to make the mold go away. In fact, it can easily make it harder to get rid of the mold. Before, the Army owned the building. Issue the necessary orders and spend the necessary money to remove the mold and rectify the defects that let the mold fester. Now, someone else owns the building; everything is at an arm’s length. Not so easy to issue orders to a private business over what that business is to do with its own property.

The military already has plenty of problems overseeing private contractors, to the end that such contractors are already routinely implicated in wasteful spending. I once, long ago, worked in that sector, and from personal experience, private defence contractors combine the avarice of private enterprise, the insulation from market forces of government bureaucracy, and the secrecy of the national security establishment. Approximately as good an incubator of corruption and waste as those unsanitary barracks are of mold.

In fact, there has already been some limited privatization of military housing and (surprise, surprise) the military has already struggled with ensuring that the private contractors don’t cut corners and deliver unacceptable results.

The arguments offered for privatization were very weak. So weak, in fact, that if you look into those arguments, you find that they are actually arguments against privatization. First was the (totally unsupported) assertion that “this cannot be solved through the traditional military construction process.” Then there was some mumbling about how “Congress just won’t appropriate” and “We’ve got to use the capital markets to do this.”

Well, if Congress won’t spend money fixing up those barracks, why will private businesses? Just to altruistically be nice? It is to laugh: Capitalists are in business to make money. No, that money will have to come from the government, via the fees it pays to the contractors. Go look up cost-plus and get back to me.

If Congress won’t spend money on fixing up those barracks directly, why would it spend money on hiring private businesses to fix them up? Once again, capitalists are in business to make money. Now you not only have the labour and materials costs of construction to contend with, you have the profits of a capitalist as well. Those profits are not going to come from some secret orchard of money trees the capitalist knows about. They are going to come out of money the government pays the capitalist. In other words, costs to the government will go up, not down, if the traditional military construction process (done at cost) is privatized. Congratulations! The gap between available funds and necessary funds has now grown wider.

So far as the “capital markets” go, again, the problem is worse with privatization. Capitalists get to borrow money from the private capital markets. Banks charge borrowers rates in excess of interest paid to savers. Of course they do: bankers are capitalists, too, and have to get their profits from someplace. You can cut the bankers out of the picture with bonds, of course, but the government can do this as well. And since government bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the government, while private businesses can and sometimes do go bankrupt, the government can get away with paying bondholders less interest, because it doesn’t have to reward them for accepting the additional risk of private bonds. Again, congratulations! You are now spending more to borrow money.

It all makes me wonder who is paying the two “experts” this show interviewed. I would be very surprised to learn that they and/or their spouses are not in some way invested in businesses likely to be hired as contractors under the privatization schemes they are arguing for.

None of the above downsides of privatization were, of course, mentioned in the program. It just ended on a high note of free-market pixie dust being able to work its magic, if only the bad old Congress would allow it to.

And this was on NPR, the allegedly left-leaning public radio network that is supposed to be at the best capitalism-sketpical. No wonder the parameters of public dialogue are so badly skewed in the USA.

Published at 23:26 on 23 February 2024

Frankly, that’s what this sounds like. And I doubt it will be significantly more effective than the original sanctions.

Sanctions have their limits, particularly when the world is addicted to the fossil fuels that are the sanctionee’s main export.

Published at 08:09 on 16 February 2024

Of course Putin did it. If Putin didn’t order it directly, he did so indirectly by having Navalny jailed and sent to a penal colony in Siberia famed for its harsh conditions. And why wouldn’t Putin order it directly? An astounding number of his opponents have suddenly, mysteriously, and prematurely dropped dead. The odds of all those deaths simply being coincidence are so small as to be safely disregarded.

The West, particularly the USA, is being hypocritical about it. There has recently been a little bit of daylight allowed to show between US and Israeli foreign policy, but the USA is still shovelling military aid Israel’s way as it ruthlessly pummels the troublesome Palestinians in Gaza. Plus the USA is now dropping bombs on Iraq with the stated aim of offing more enemies (and no doubt some innocent civilians as well). Plenty of disrespect for human life there, yet not a whole lot of concern about it. So spare me the excess sanctimony.

Trump, and many of his followers, dream of being able to do this. Because of course they do. They, and only they, are in their eyes the only “real” Americans; everyone who dissents from their politics is a threat to the nation. Trump and his followers openly admire Putin, and they do so not in spite of his tactics, but because of them. Trump already regularly uses words like “vermin” to refer to his adversaries. What does one do to vermin? What does one do to rats or roaches if one finds them in one’s house?

Published at 15:19 on 12 February 2024

This is what a win on Palestine looks like at this point.

You didn’t think the decades-long policy of backing Israel no matter what would suddenly end completely, did you? Because longstanding policies locked in by iron triangles just do not vanish in one fell swoop.

That there is any daylight now publicly showing between US and Israeli foreign policy is nothing short of amazing. That it is happening via a joint message from a US president and an Arab leader adds to the significance.

That accelerating decline in the State of Israel’s reputation of which I mentioned earlier, plus growing public sympathy for the Palestinian cause, is starting to work its changes.

Published at 20:22 on 11 February 2024

I think they might have.

One of Biden’s big weak points the last time was his age. That problem has only grown worse, since none of us are getting any younger. The Special Counsel’s report certainly didn’t help in that regard.

Biden’s candidacy was defensible last time in part because he strongly suggested he would voluntarily choose to be a one-term president, and let someone new have a chance at it this time ’round. Whether it’s love of power, or a belief that he is special and the normal aging process doesn’t affect him, he changed his mind.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the Democrats didn’t cede the narrative-framing to the other party. But they do, so here we are.

None of this proves Trump is going to win this time. It just makes this outcome far more likely than it should be.

Published at 10:37 on 9 February 2024

Let me start by saying this is not the fault of anyone at Perry Street Software. They actually tried. The Scruff app has features that would enable it to be something different from what it actually is in practice… if, of course, its user base desired that. The problem is that user base. What it wants is, generally, what Scruff actually is in practice. And what Scruff actually is, is not what I want.

I had written off smartphone dating apps as, well, basically what I have now experimentally determined them to be, ever since they first came on the scene. Late last year, I came to the conclusion I was being overly dismissive and should at least get some actual evidence to base my beliefs on.

It turns out there is dismissiveness, but then again there is also the wisdom of experience. Sometimes it can be hard to distinguish between the two. In this case, it was the wisdom of experience all along. The scene on Scruff is every bit as bleak as I had believed it to be. I did not bother checking out Grindr, but I did some research on their policies and all the evidence pointed it to being even worse, and with my current experience under my belt the latter is not even worth a chance.

You see, the main reason I do not self-identify as “gay” is that so much of the expression of gay male sexuality is the expression of typical male sexuality in general, specifically the typical male sex drive. I do not share that sex drive. My sex drive is more like the typical female sex drive; sex without a deeper personal connection is not very meaningful to me, and the few times I have had it, I have found it to be the most mediocre and disappointing sex of my life.

So much of the gay male subculture revolves around that male sex drive. (Straight men would have as much casual sex as gay men, if only straight women were as interested in it.) For me, it’s always seemed much like my junior high and high school years (where all the guys were madly obsessed over something I had little interest in) all over again.

I was hoping that by not choosing “Random Play/NSA” (NSA = no strings attached, i.e. sex without the expectation of anything more), and by writing a profile that indicated my interests, I might be able to find a kindred spirit of some sort.

Ho, ho, ho! Read the other guy’s profile. Good one. That would slow down the quest for more sexual conquests, so what’s the point? It’s all click on the pic and flirt for casual sex. Regarding NSA, approximately 98% of the user base indicates that as an interest. Because of course they do. Welcome to the gay male subculture.

I add a simple test in my profile (an unusual word that has to be mentioned at the start of any communications, to weed out those who did not read it). No new messages mention that word. None. Zero. Zilch. Oh well, at least it makes it easier to block ’em and move on.

General laziness, plus perhaps some unrealistic hope, means I haven’t yet closed my account and deleted the app. But I see that happening in the not too distant future.

Published at 07:26 on 8 February 2024

After thinking about it a bit more, that is my conclusion.

First, it was inevitable that the Supreme Court would take this case, and expedite it. Not taking it would result in fifty different states with fifty different processes for disqualifying Trump. Some states would end up striking him from the ballot, some would not. Yes, there would be partisan bias at play here, but the important thing is a leading candidate that does not appear on all ballots.

Second, it would then build. Right-leaning states would retaliate by cooking up some justification for striking Biden from the ballot while leaving Trump on it. Now we have a situation where both leading candidates do not appear on all ballots.

The Court remaining silent would, in other words, be a recipe for nationwide chaos due to a profound constitutional crisis. So the Court has to rule.

Now the question is how the Court will rule. And here we get to a simple issue of expediency: it will be easier for the Court to compel all states to leave Trump on the ballot than it will for it to compel them to all strike him from the ballot. Moreover, by setting the bar really high, such a ruling will nip such chaos in the bud generally.

This is likely to result in standards that make it effectively impossible to bar an insurrectionist president from the ballot. This will of course continue the slow rot in the Republic that has turned the presidency into in an increasingly imperial position. That rot, however, is something that has been ongoing for decades, and liberals as well as conservatives have been willing co-participants in it. It is also something to easily remain in denial of due to an attitude of American exceptionalism (“that sort of thing can never happen here”). Again, both liberals and conservatives harbour this attitude, which is widespread to the point of ubiquity in the USA.

So the decision will not only come out in favour of Trump, but it will be possible for such a decision to be easily rationalized by the Court’s more liberal justices. As such, it would not surprise me in the least to see more than six votes in favour of Trump, and even a 9–0 decision is within the realm of plausibility. In fact, I would have to say that the odds favour at least one liberal pro-Trump vote, because this will be perceived as increasing the Court’s legitimacy. Chief Justice Roberts is likely to push hard for a ruling that will attract at least one liberal vote.

Note that this does not mean that all justices would issue the same decision. It is entirely possible for there to be multiple explanations issued for a pro-Trump vote, with the moderates and liberals signing onto one and the conservatives onto another.

The main point is that a decision in favour of Trump is way more likely than one against him.

Published at 22:44 on 7 February 2024

It’s the libraries, stupid.

The standard Swift library is laughably in-comprehensive. Things you can do in the standard libraries for Java, Python, PHP, C#, Ruby, and most other common modern programming languages just aren’t in there.

What you are supposed to do, from what I gather, is to use the Apple Foundation framework. There are several problems with that:

• The framework is a hot mess. It got its start back in the 1990’s as part of the NeXT operating system, and has been incrementally hacked on ever since. The documentation is likewise a mess: incomplete, cryptic, and poorly-organized. It is fully part of the pattern that Apple products tend to be as programmer-hostile as they are user-friendly.
• The framework is still incomplete. Support for tasks as basic as doing buffered reads from an arbitrary text file on a line-by-line basis are absent from it. (At least I think they are absent; review the part about the documentation being a hot mess above.)
• The framework is an Apple-only thing. There is an ongoing effort to open-source the Foundation framework so that Swift programs can be more portable, but it is a work in progress.

The bottom line is that Swift is not, in fact, the general-purpose programming language it is claimed to be. Unless one is writing native-mode GUI applications for Apple products, Swift really doesn’t make much sense.

It’s a shame, as the core Swift language looks to be fairly well-designed. It could be a great general-purpose programming language if only it came with a decent standard library. Alas, that’s a bit like saying Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln could have had an enjoyable evening at Ford’s Theatre if only that hadn’t happened.

I may eventually delve into Swift for such purposes, but as things currently stand, programming in Kotlin with the Java Swing platform allows me to develop GUI tools that run on my Mac, and I don’t have to deal with all the ugliness that is Apple’s native programming environment. Swing isn’t perfect, and its rough edges sometimes manifest, but it’s been good enough for my personal use.