All of this is accurate, but it is still hilarious seeing NPR of all organizations act aghast at the idea of a supposedly “independent” media organization serving as the mouthpiece for Empire.

It might have something to do with both countries being founded and governed by Fascists. It bears remembering that the KMT colonized the island of Taiwan in much the same way that Israel colonized Palestine; with a swift and brutal round of ethnic cleansing to secure their local hegemony, followed by decades of military support from Fascists in the West.

I don’t think China should invade Taiwan but it drives me up the wall that so many people think that they are some plucky little democracy standing up to the big, bad, commies, when the reality is that they are just another hyper-capitalist settler-colonial project in the same vein as the US, Israel, Canada, etc.

Good people do not, as a rule, seek personal power for themselves, and a drive to do so is a prerequisite for seeking public office. The result is that the best you can hope for in electoral politics is a psychopath who shares your values, because they are all psychopaths, and most of them don’t see the rest of us as human, much less their equals.

Not just any propaganda network, Radio Free X is the umbrella under which the CIA disseminates black propaganda abroad, and also the organ which delivered kill lists to the anti-communist kill squads in Indonesia during the us-backed mass killings there.

All of this is declassified and public knowledge btw, not a conspiracy theory, although plenty of folks would like to still pretend that the US grew a conscience at some point and stopped wielding the CIA as a cudgel against global democracy, but the evidence overwhelmingly suggests otherwise.

If you are interested in learning about Radio Free Asia, or US led mass killings in general, I recommend The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins.

https://www.opentech.fund/news/february-2018-monthly-report/

It’s not a secret. It’s on their website. Note: the Open Technology Fund is the CIA. Just like Radio Free Asia (or Radio Free X, they’re all CIA-run appendages of the US state department) which the fund grew out of. The US government very often funds technologies and startups that have the potential surveillance applications (among other things) and Signal was one of them. The people calling this a conspiracy theory have no idea what they are talking about, but that’s not uncommon when it comes to Americans and swallowing their own propaganda whole.

Signal was developed with financial backing by the CIA, so do with that information what you will. I use Teleguard which is very similar to Telegram but run out of Switzerland, and with 2-way encryption automatically enabled, unlike signal or telegram.

I had that watch! I wore it until the cheap plastic band crumbled to pieces. I haven’t thought about that in years haha

Do you have an HDMI cable? I have my laptop more or less permanently plugged into the TV for exactly the purpose of watching movies, whether pirated or otherwise.

Having lived in Austin and seen movies at the original handful of Drafthouse theaters for decades now, every time the brand has expanded, quality has dropped. I’m not expecting this change to be any different.

Yes! I work for a non-profit, providing a highly in-demand service to my community, for free or at a reduced cost. Nobody is getting rich doing what we do, but we are actively enriching and supporting our community. It is also a fantastic foot in the door for other forms of cooperation, community support, and mutual aid.

Not all non-profits are on the level, but no company with a profit motive will ever provide the kind of environment that a good non-profit can.

I am going to be living in my car starting in just a few days, and it is terrifying imagining all the ways that a single encounter with the police could destroy what’s left of my life. America, and my state in particular, is incredibly hostile to its own people, in such a staggering array of different ways that it can be hard to fully appreciate at times. We live in a bad country, run by bad people.

There’s a whole lot of different takes here already, so I’m just going to plug this very excellent book: Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life and bounce.

This dude is genuinely a nightmare. He’s an outspoken evangelical jesus freak who is explicitly using his position to maintain a deeply unjust water monopoly for his home-town farming community. Every part of his biography reads like he was cooked up in a Reagan-era laboratory somewhere to be the ultimate Republican. In the four years he’s been in his position he’s already completely dropped any pretense of working for equitable water rights. He’s a fully committed weapon for a specific, tiny, hateful little community full of water-thieving land-barons who derive those very same water rights from treaties that they reneged on with the local Native Americans. I hope he stubs his toe on every chair and table he ever passes, for the rest of his natural life.

Please do not solicit medical advice from the internet. If you are concerned, go to a minute-clinic or other doc-in-a-box. It’s much cheaper than the ER, and they’ll tell you if there’s anything to worry about.

He was an off-duty pilot catching a ride in the jump seat behind the pilots in the cabin, which is completely normal. The guy being a fucking lunatic is where things went wrong.

I haven’t seen it yet. I was woefully late to the Jordan Peele party, and only saw Get Out this Summer, and then Us just yesterday. Everyone has been hyping up Nope though, so it won’t be long before I throw it on.

I dig RLM, and I like seeing what they thought of movies I’ve already watched, so I’ll definitely give that one a view once I track down the next few in the series.

Ha! I’m glad you appreciated it :-)

I used to watch Mary-Lou’s Flip-Flop Shop every Saturday morning as a kid. Apparently it was locally produced in Houston, where I lived, so I wonder if it was even known about elsewhere? Basically she had a Saturday morning kids’ show that ran for one season, and it aired at like 6:30am. For some reason I was obsessed with it (despite being slightly older than the target demographic by the time it was airing) and I would wake up ungodly early on Saturdays to watch Mary Lou do somersaults and tell jokes.

Thanks, I’ll be posting them here, as well as to my Letterboxd and a few other forums. If you haven’t read them already, you can find my reviews of the other Halloween movies (and others) here.