CK MacLeod's

Noted & Quoted

What It’s Like To Have Your Anti-Trump Art Go Mega-Viral – Co.Design

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Operation American Greatness

What It’s Like To Have Your Anti-Trump Art Go Mega-Viral – Co.Design

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Operation American Greatness

So, does Mitchell make any money on the work, which has been shared so many times? He uploaded a high-res image of the symbol and granted permission for anyone to use it personally for free. But for those who want to support his work or simply want something readymade, you can also buy T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and journals emblazoned with the symbol through Threadless.“I really just want to spread the image as much as possible and cement it in history,” Mitchell says. “In all honesty, the amount I’ve made from my Threadless shop so far is still less than my hourly rate, so I don’t really see it as a big deal. If you look at my Twitter, half the replies are people wanting to know where they can buy a shirt. Threadless is happy to help them out with that, and so I’m happy to let that happen.”Now that the symbol has flooded our streets and our timelines, Mitchell just has one request: “Impeach this idiot already,” he says.

From: What It’s Like To Have Your Anti-Trump Art Go Mega-Viral

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Steven Pearlstein: Mark this date: Donald Trump is now a lame-duck president – The Washington Post

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Operation American Greatness

Steven Pearlstein: Mark this date: Donald Trump is now a lame-duck president – The Washington Post

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Operation American Greatness

This is a Waterloo moment for Trump, the tea party and their alliance. They have been stopped in their tracks not only by Democratic opposition but because of a mutiny within their own ranks. Although never particularly liked or respected, it is now clear that they are no longer feared. The bankruptcy of their ideas and their incompetence have been exposed. Their momentum has been dissipated. Their rejection of political norms has itself been scorned. Our long national nightmare may finally be coming to an end.

From: Mark this date: Donald Trump is now a lame-duck president - The Washington Post

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Jonathan Freedland: With Trump it’s time to go beyond mere disgust – The Guardian

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Operation American Greatness

Jonathan Freedland: With Trump it’s time to go beyond mere disgust – The Guardian

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Operation American Greatness

One seasoned Democrat told me that among the reasons Trump won in 2016 was that a long year of Crooked Hillary talk, about emails and Goldman Sachs and the like, had steadily demoralised and demobilised the liberal base. If sustaining fury at Trump helps keep those same voters energised, so they eventually turn out to defeat him, it’ll be worth it, he says.
But it can’t just be in the form of world-weary, if witty, tweets. What’s needed is a coherent argument, one that explains why Trump’s repulsive behaviour matters. For Americans, that will surely centre on the state of their society. The civic realm is being degraded by Trump’s lies, vanities and insults. The national conversation is being coarsened. The basic democratic assumption, that disagreements can be resolved through discussion rather than coercion and violence, is being eroded from the very top. Note the language of Scaramucci’s outburst: “I want to fucking kill all the leakers.”

From: With Trump it’s time to go beyond mere disgust | Jonathan Freedland | Opinion | The Guardian

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David Wallace-Wells: When Will Climate Change Make the Earth Too Hot For Humans? – New York

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Ecology

David Wallace-Wells: When Will Climate Change Make the Earth Too Hot For Humans? – New York

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Ecology

[C]limate scientists have a strange kind of faith: We will find a way to forestall radical warming, they say, because we must.
It is not easy to know how much to be reassured by that bleak certainty, and how much to wonder whether it is another form of delusion; for global warming to work as parable, of course, someone needs to survive to tell the story. The scientists know that to even meet the Paris goals, by 2050, carbon emissions from energy and industry, which are still rising, will have to fall by half each decade; emissions from land use (deforestation, cow farts, etc.) will have to zero out; and we will need to have invented technologies to extract, annually, twice as much carbon from the atmosphere as the entire planet’s plants now do. Nevertheless, by and large, the scientists have an enormous confidence in the ingenuity of humans — a confidence perhaps bolstered by their appreciation for climate change, which is, after all, a human invention, too. They point to the Apollo project, the hole in the ozone we patched in the 1980s, the passing of the fear of mutually assured destruction. Now we’ve found a way to engineer our own doomsday, and surely we will find a way to engineer our way out of it, one way or another. The planet is not used to being provoked like this, and climate systems designed to give feedback over centuries or millennia prevent us — even those who may be watching closely — from fully imagining the damage done already to the planet. But when we do truly see the world we’ve made, they say, we will also find a way to make it livable. For them, the alternative is simply unimaginable.

From: When Will Climate Change Make the Earth Too Hot For Humans?

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Charles Pierce: This, Right Here. This Is Where Obama Choked. – Esquire

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The Russian Angle

Charles Pierce: This, Right Here. This Is Where Obama Choked. – Esquire

(1)

The Russian Angle

They were concerned that any pre-election response could provoke an escalation from Putin. Moscow's meddling to that point was seen as deeply concerning but unlikely to materially affect the outcome of the election. Far more worrisome to the Obama team was the prospect of a cyber-assault on voting systems before and on Election Day. They also worried that any action they took would be perceived as political interference in an already volatile campaign. By August, Trump was predicting that the election would be rigged. Obama officials feared providing fuel to such claims, playing into Russia's efforts to discredit the outcome and potentially contaminating the expected Clinton triumph.
This, right here. This is where they choked. The American people had damned close to an absolute right to the information their government already had. The most fundamental act of citizenship is the right to cast an informed vote. The idea that the Obama administration withheld the fact that the Russians were ratfcking the election in order to help elect a vulgar talking yam is a terrible condemnation of the whole No Drama Obama philosophy. Would Donald Trump have raised hell if the White House released what it knew? Of course, he would have. But, as it was, the American people went to vote with only about half of the information they needed to assess his candidacy. This was a terrible decision.

From: President Barack Obama Knew Russia Hacked Election 2016 to Elect Donald Trump

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All N'd & Q'd →

(so: “the stationary state”) (oag #13)

July 20, 2017 | Posted in Neo-Imperialism, Operation American Greatness | | No Comments ↓

What a colossal missed opportunity.
— Dan Scotto (@dscotto10) July 18, 2017

Well what's colossal about the missed opportunity is that it circumscribes the entire era, not just this moment of broad GOP pseudo-control.
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) July 18, 2017

(It always had to be pseudo-control, since the anti-government party is constrained from coherently exploiting formal "control" of govt)
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) July 18, 2017

(meanwhile the culturally ascendant, formally out-of-power party of govt can exploit system paralysis itself against dismantlement of govt)
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) July 18, 2017

(so: the stationary state, eroding entropically, searching for the crisis that may demand or allow for true "progress" – or mayn't)
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) July 18, 2017

Posted in Neo-Imperialism, Operation American Greatness

Jacket X

“The world of things calls for art, in which intellectual accession to being moves into enjoyment, in which the Infinity of the idea is idolized in the finite, but sufficient, image.” — Emmanuel Levinas

July 8, 2017 | Posted in notes, Photography | | No Comments ↓

Photo by Sullivan & Sullivan

Posted in notes, Photography

Gutenberg: The Invention of the Printing Press, the Destruction of WordPress

July 7, 2017 | Posted in notes, Using WordPress | Tagged with: Gutenberg, Wordpress | 4 Comments ↓

Or at least that’s what some people seem to think about the new “page-builder” style editor with which WordPress.org seems to be planning to replace the current post editor:

While the developers working on the Gutenberg editor plugin have obviously put a lot of work into creating the plugin and I commend them on their efforts so far, the truth is, this plugin is nowhere near ready to be included in WordPress and needs a lot more work, in particular, UX work.The WordPress.org Gutenberg page states: “The goal of the block editor is to make adding rich content to WordPress simple and enjoyable.”
Unfortunately, the plugin as it currently functions is a long, long way from achieving this goal.

That’s from the WPMUDev blog, under the title “Gutenberg Editor Review: Please Don’t Include This in WordPress Core.” User reviews of Gutenberg in plug-in/Beta form are not much better, though a few users do profess to be excited about it.

Posted in notes, Using WordPress Tagged with: Gutenberg, Wordpress

For the Fourth: Holy American Major League of Nations (Notes on Baseball, Booze, and the Re-De-Nationalization of Americanism)

It welcomed the tests of time/
Like an eternal friend,/
Our country is blessed,/
Our country is such!

(Originally posted 1 April 2012)

The Anacreontic Song (Georgia Tech Glee Club)

God Bless a Metonym

Scott observes a process of the trans-nationalization of baseball alongside the seemingly contradictory patriotic and militaristic displays at Angels pre-season games. He refers specifically to members of the military being asked to stand for rounds of applause, and he wonders why women who have not had cosmetic surgery are not instead asked to stand. As further discussion confirmed, and as consideration of the ritualistic singing of the national anthem at modern American Major League baseball games ought to confirm, the relationship of baseball to American (American-style) nationalism is a complex and possibly contradictory, possibly dialectical one.

Scott: And the cool thing is that the term “American” itself contains these potentialities. Have you written about that?

I believe that Scott was referring to the notion that our Washingtonian empire of Unitedstatesia has managed to seize the grand metonym “America” for itself along with the economically most promising expanse of the North American continent, arguably (materially-demonstrably: historically) the most geo-politically and geo-economically exploitable terrain on the planet under our loosely speaking modern conditions of commerce and technology – secure, resource-rich, underpopulated, arable, temperate, benefiting from relatively unobstructed internal and external connections: To employ the baseball cliche, the United States is the country that was born on third base geographically.

…the rest of the thing →

Posted in Anismism, Music, Neo-Imperialism, Old Gone Over, Political Philosophy, Sports, US History, War, Yoga Tagged with: America, American Idea, Americanism, Anti-Federalism, baseball, Borat, Constitution, Democratic Republican, Federalism, Francis Scott Key, Francis Scott Smith Miller, Gordon Wood, Ideal Americanism, Jefferson, Kazakhstan, Madison, Metonymy, National Anthem, Nationalism, Pennsylvania, Scott Smith Miller, Star-Spangled Banner, War of 1812, Whiskey Rebellion, Woodrow Wilson, Yoga

While 2017 happens…

June 4, 2017 | Posted in notes | | 3 Comments ↓

If not the very best picture of 2017 so far, the one below, which has been sweeping through Twitter, has to be in the running at least for best and most sympatico – “this man is all of us just living our lives while 2017 happens lol!” – amateur photo:

THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, Cecilia Wessels, mandatory credit

According to the photo caption at Times Colonist, “Cecilia Wessels snapped the picture of her husband, Theunis, as the twister passed near their home in Three Hills.”

Posted in notes

Counter-Drizzle on the Hypothesis of the End of the American World-Historical Era (OAG #12c)

May 31, 2017 | Posted in Neo-Imperialism, Operation American Greatness | | 1 Comment ↓

The counterargument vs Panic of the Fall of the US Order can still be made either independently or, perhaps more difficult, complementarily.
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) May 28, 2017

In short: The American ideal retains its impetus vs. particular events, individuals, while US preeminence remains materially determined.
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) May 28, 2017

If Merkel's Europe assumes leadership for a time, for example, it seems openly on historically inherited terms…
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) May 28, 2017

…if and when an US restoration is sought, a place at and quite possibly at the head of the table will likely still be available…
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) May 28, 2017

…After the Trumpian interregnum is over, the bodies buried and costs tallied, a more mature "condominium" ought to be achievable.
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) May 28, 2017

Posted in Neo-Imperialism, Operation American Greatness

German Trust in America – the Trend (#OAG 12b)

May 31, 2017 | Posted in Operation American Greatness | Tagged with: Germany | 4 Comments ↓

There has been some attempted pushback – including in the comments here – on the notion that Donald Trump has uniquely damaged German-American relations, particularly in relation to the views of the German public – for example:

Merkel chose a Munich beer hall as her venue to speak out and she was on the campaign trail for the elections to the Bundestag in October. She was speaking to a German audience which holds the United States in poor esteem. By the way, this has nothing to do with Trump. The percentage of Germans who trusted the US plunged from 76% to 34% during the first six years of the Barack Obama presidency. (On the other hand, sixty percent of Germans admire the ex-CIA whistle blower Edward Snowden as a heroic figure.)

As the poll history depicted above demonstrates, observers like M.K. Bhadrakumar are playing the deepest valley in recent pre-Trump American-German relations vs. Obama’s post-Bush, inaugural high. Read more ›

Posted in Operation American Greatness Tagged with: Germany

Tweet-Drizzle on Merkel on New World Disorder (OAG #12)

If the generation since the fall of the USSR has been a tale of the unfitness of the USA for leadership, then Trump is pure continuity.

May 28, 2017 | Posted in Neo-Imperialism, Operation American Greatness | Tagged with: Balakrishnan, Mao, Merkel, Schmitt, Stein, Timothy Garton Ash, Trump | 2 Comments ↓

The 100,000 ft, theodicy of Trumpism, paradoxes of neo-imperialism view is that long-term unreliability of US world leadership was a given.
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) May 28, 2017

The unsuitability of the US as hegemon is what made its hegemony tolerable, but also made a crisis inevitable. It's occurring right on time.
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) May 28, 2017

…also predicted: that left-liberals who spent the last decade or generation or two deriding US-led global order would bewail its demise.
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) May 28, 2017

One Giant Leap for Ordinary Gentlepersonkind (Commenter Ignore Button Use Case)

“The reality is, on any public forum there is going to be a peanut gallery, and I’ve never seen a moderation policy that can quite eliminate them, but not eliminate interesting people who I want to hear from. So, culled lists, either individually (as here) or collectively (as was needed in a larger space such as Twitter), are a fine thing. They make a forum far more pleasant to use.”

May 28, 2017 | Posted in Ordinary Times, WordPress Plug-Ins | Tagged with: Commenter Ignore Button, Wordpress | No Comments ↓

The powers that are at Ordinary Times, my old development haunt, have seen their way to installing Commenter Ignore Button (CIB), which I developed with the commenting culture and its discontents at their very site as inspiration. Commenter veronica d, using the tool quite as I had envisioned people using it, has provided some user response which, I’m happy to report, is as perceptive as it is positive and in both cases very: Read more ›

Posted in Ordinary Times, WordPress Plug-Ins Tagged with: Commenter Ignore Button, Wordpress

Theodicy of Trump – a Tweet-Drizzle (OAG #11)

May 17, 2017 | Posted in Operation American Greatness | | 2 Comments ↓

Counterpoint: Framing her campaign as "Trump is existential threat & unfit" & downplaying Dem agenda WAS tacking to the center. https://t.co/VPvA7suQW8
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) May 17, 2017

She and Obama thought and said that, but did not act truly consequentially on it… This seems hard for their supporters to confront. https://t.co/ev72ESurSM
— CK MacLeod (@CK_MacLeod) May 17, 2017

@CK_MacLeod What would acting consequentially on it have looked like?
— Zeke (@Don_Zeko) May 17, 2017

Posted in Operation American Greatness

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2017-07-22 16:05:36

to CK MacLeod

CK MacLeod

+ BTW, I recently upgraded some this and that on the back end of the blog, and it does seem to make comments post much faster [. . .]

Gutenberg: The Invention of the Printing Press, the Destruction of WordPress

2017-07-22 16:00:39

to bob

CK MacLeod

For WordPress self-hosted people, there is already a "restore legacy editor" plugin, even though Gutenberg hasn't been installed yet as the default.

Gutenberg: The Invention of the Printing Press, the Destruction of WordPress

2017-07-22 15:57:27

to bob

CK MacLeod

+ I thought you were on WordPress.com, not self-hosted WordPress. I can't find any info on WordPress.com and Gutenberg or Gutenbergerish editing, so I don't know [. . .]

Gutenberg: The Invention of the Printing Press, the Destruction of WordPress

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2014-11-26 1:23 pm
The Decline of Political-Cultural Blogging in One Page
bob
When I set AG coming up on 3 yrs ago, I decided not to include a blogroll because they seemed to me to be generally in [...]
2016-05-14 12:18 pm
To CK MacLeod
An Ancient Peruvian Mystery Has Been Solved From Space – IFLScience
Wade McKenzie
I've given a little more thought to your citation of the Roman aqueducts, and I realize that I missed something important about it--it posed far [...]
2015-05-16 12:52 pm
To Wade McKenzie
Negative Action
CK MacLeod
Now, I could point out that this site is my site. I pay for it. I built it. I maintain it. All of its content [...]

Americanist Syndrome

Would a truly "exceptional" destiny need to proclaim its independence from fate, or would it leave that task to others? Can such exceptionalism forever exclude or contain the terminal exception of exceptions to its infinite autonomy?

Categories: Philosophy, Politics, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, The Exception, History, US History

Internal Contradictions of Liberal Democracy in Relation to Islamism (Religion, 3 of 3)

Specifically in confrontation with a decisively unitary politico-religious concept of the state, an unexamined commitment to a faulty dual or dichotomous conception fundamentally compromises analysis, and turns the best political science into simplistic polemics and interventionist propaganda.

Categories: History, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, On Liberal Democracy in Relation to Islamism, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, The Exception

Pacific War: Strategy and the World-Historical State

For the world-historical power there are only grand strategy and incidental diversions, at best marginal calibrations or corrections on a course already set, and alterable if at all or ever only by events, if any, developing on its own level.

Categories: History, Neo-Imperialism, Philosophy, War

Commenter Ignore Button Plug-In Now Available from the WordPress Repo

January 24th, 2017

Commenter Ignore Button (CIB) lets a user to put one or more commenters "on ignore." To have such an option enabled is a frequent request at blogs and other sites where comment threads are plagued by trolls or other problematic commenters, but where site operators prefer to err on the side of open discussion - or don't want to get involved unless they really have to. Once users become generally aware of the option, people just seeking attention may either be more polite or move somewhere else, while regular commenters - and lurkers - may become more willing to engage.[...]

Ignoring in "Illdy": A CIB Adaptation to a "Bootstrapped" Theme (Case Study)

January 23rd, 2017

If you're not able to perfect your theme yourself, or not willing to hire a designer, then being a perfectionist is unrealistic. Yet just getting good enough on first glance results when adding CIB to customized comment templates, even before fine-tuning, may require some more complicated work. For those intimidated by the prospect, here is an example of curing the output on one typically atypical theme.[...]

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