Rope knotted around a post

It’s high school, and I believe copyright is ridiculous.

My dad has introduced me to Project Gutenberg, an ever-growing library of books in the public domain, and I am spellbound. Contained within its creaky website are thousands of books that are owned by nobody. Or maybe everybody. After all, I could download one and do whatever I wanted with it. I could republish The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, only with the protagonist’s name changed to something patently absurd like “Benedict Cumberbatch”, and I would be utterly free of consequences, because I own those stories now as much as anyone else. They are free to be remixed, reworked. They belong to none of us, and all of us.

Continue reading

Ian Danskin of Innuendo Studios has this great new video about the right’s fixation on cuckoldry and what “cuck” as an insult means, through the lens of their fixation upon polyamory. In it is also a deeply relatable segment about how being a polyamorous man often gives lots of opportunity to “win” by toxic masculinity’s standards… but that’s not something he (or I) are really interested in.

I can’t do it justice; it’s just real good. Here, watch:

This post was originally shared on my Facebook page.

Good morning, friends.

It is likely to get a lot worse this week. That’s the nature of exponential growth. Hopefully, within another week, we’ll start seeing the effects of our mitigation strategies, but given how spottily they’ve been implemented so far… I’m not confident.

This could have been prevented. So much of this could be prevented. But the president, the federal government, business owners, corporate shareholders–so many people who have the power to do something do not. They placate, they shift blame, they try to consolidate power.

Many people have spent the last four years insisting that somehow, the system will correct itself. By now, I hope that’s obviously false. All we have is each other. There’s no automatic safeguard, only people’s intentional choices.

I don’t want to encourage panic here. Panic doesn’t solve anything. But if you’ve got anger baking in your stomach, now is the time to interrogate it. Anger shows you what you value: it says there’s a gulf between where you are and where you think things ought to be. Anger is an activating emotion: it fills us with a surge of energy to try to close that gap.

So if you’re angry–what is the better world you envision? And what do you want to do to get there?

How much longer can this go on? If they give trillions of your money to bail out companies but fail to protect workers? If the federal government continues to withhold aid and refuses to order production of critical supplies? If the president keeps lying about unproven cures, lying about the disease, lying about his response–just plain lying?

How much longer will it go on before it spurs you to act?

A couple days ago, in my video on the threat response cycle, I said we’ve been freezing because neither fight nor flight are viable. But we aren’t helpless. While we still can’t punch coronavirus in the face, there ARE active things we can do. Like organizing. Like getting to know our neighbors. Like joining networks of mutual aid.

You can channel your anger and fear into those activities. Let your hands, shaking with rage, lay bricks for a better tomorrow.

It all starts with recognizing what is so broken and imagining how it could be different.

Dream big and fight hard,
Your buddy Spencer

PS: As much as you can, STAY THE FUCK HOME. ❤️

This post was originally shared to my Facebook page.

As the federal government starts actually talking about some form of a temporary relief payment, let’s talk about means-testing.

Means-testing is the process by which the government decides who is eligible for a social service. Your income must be below X. Your family must look like Y.

How do you verify that someone’s income really is below X? Well, you have to inspect their accounts. You have to monitor them. You have to treat them with suspicion. You’re encouraged to err on the side of false positives–if you think someone might be ineligible, better to cut them off than risk letting someone “cheat the system”.

That requires extra resources.

For whatever reason, there’s a certain subset of liberals that have, this year, decided that the “universal” in “universal healthcare” and “universal basic income” should really mean “universal only for people who need it”. They welcome means-testing so that “the kids of rich billionaires don’t get free college”. And look, I understand the sentiment. It comes from a good place.

But the resources and system it would require to ensure that “only people who need it” get these benefits? They make the process so much more bloated, inefficient, and cruel.

Universal should mean universal. That’s the simplest way forward. If the government cuts you a $1000 emergency relief check and you don’t need it, then donate it to someone who does. Give it to the Americans United to Eat the Rich charity of your choice. You have many options for not keeping it. But let’s not preemptively burden a program for social good with the stipulations, bureaucracy, and inefficiency that means-testing requires.

Mr. Trump--I mean, Toad.

I.

Toad is very rich and a bit of a fop, with a penchant for Harris tweed suits. He owns his own horse, and is able to indulge his impulsive desires, such as punting, house boating and hot air ballooning. Toad is intelligent, creative and resourceful; however, he is also narcissistic, self-centred almost to the point of sociopathy, and completely lacking in even the most basic common sense.

Wikipedia

Let’s call him Mr. Toad. Continue reading

Confederate flag

Throughout the month of August, I'm aiming to write 25 blog posts. This is post #18 of 25. Find them all in the "blogathon 2014" category.

[Content note: Racism, slavery, Nazism]

Why… Why would someone choose to hang a Confederate flag across the rear window of their truck (safety concerns aside)? Aside from total obliviousness or outright racism, do you think there is any sort of justification for displaying one’s pride in the ideals of the South that could possibly outweigh the blatant discomfort caused in others by their (justified?) associations with that display?

Lynyrd

Short answer: No.

Long answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo…

Nooooooo Continue reading

Ferguson Roundup

Throughout the month of August, I'm aiming to write 25 blog posts. This is post #12 of 25. Find them all in the "blogathon 2014" category.

Content warning: Police brutality, violence, racism.

My heart hurts.

It’s been a week and a half since police in Ferguson, MO shot and killed Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager. A week and a half later, and the system has devolved into a nightmare. Police responded to what were originally nonviolent protests with riot gear and military equipment and tactics. They’re using tear gas and firing rubber bullets. A curfew has been instilled. The Ferguson police seem to care little for the Constitution; peaceful protesters have reportedly been forced to stay on the move if they want to protest, violating their right to assemble, and police have arrested journalists and interfered with their work. It’s so bad that Amnesty International has, for the first time in its 53-year history, deployed a team of observers inside the United States–in this case, to collect information on what’s going on.

There’s so much that’s wrong with this. First and foremost is the blatant racism at work–Mike Brown’s murder was only the latest in a string of shootings committed by white Americans against young black Americans. Once again, America has proven that it views the lives of black teenagers as disposable, that they don’t deserve justice or fair trials, that they could be executed on the street by any white cop who thinks they look suspicious. It’s fucked.

Then there’s the terrifying amount of police power on display. This, like nothing else in the last few years, has illustrated how damn militarized our police forces have become–and what happens when you blur the lines between police and military. Seeing the police ganging up, turning on civilians, trampling on civil rights, and treating an American city like a warzone and American citizens like enemy combatants… it chills me to the bone. This is not how democracy works. This is not an acceptable use of state power. But this is what we’ve allowed to be built in this country.

All of this is weighing on me, and I feel an obligation to write a blog post about it; to write all of my remaining blog posts about it, but I don’t think that’s feasible. In lieu of that, here are a number of important links about the situation in Ferguson that you should read. Continue reading