Some Musings on Rasputin

I finished the book on Rasputin. It was interesting, thought-provoking, and yet I'm not really sure what to make of it.

There are a lot of different layers to this. Rasputin himself, of course. The rumors and conspiracy theories surrounding him. The effect of that on Russia, and the Romanov dynasty. How much of it was Rasputin himself, or the tsar and tsaritsa, or I don't even know what.

The author did a good job of portraying the complexity surrounding him, I think. I also think I keep trying to place this in my own context, and run into some definite cultural differences.

What do I mean by that? Well... if I were to consider someone holy, I would expect to see certain things. Great compassion, for example.  A lack of the pettiness and fear that is all too common in we more worldly people.

And... maybe this is Peter's influence on the Roman Catholic Church, but... not a lot of sexuality? Or if it's there, it'd be the wholesome kind. (Explaining that would take a whole other blog post, I think. The most conventional example would be a devoted husband or wife, but what I suppose it's really about is the difference between making love and f***ing. And I don't associate 'making love' with the sort of creepy, borderline predatory, behavior that seems to be documented w/regards to Rasputin. He doesn't seem to have crossed that line, so far as we can tell over 100 years later, though there are numerous accounts ascribing some sort of hypnotic power to him and that adds another layer to the incidents described.) Plus there's the drinking...

The reason I say that's a cultural thing is that apparently there's some sort of history of the starets, which I don't quite understand and may be getting mixed up with other things, but seems to allow for a sort of holy peasant, and part of that may include drunkenness? And even rudeness? Idk, I definitely seem to be lacking the cultural context to understand that.

He sounds like... well. Like most people. A mix of good and bad. Except his mix was particularly dramatic, with the 'good' seeming almost holy and the 'bad' making others view him as a con or a fraud.

I can almost see why the tsar and tsaritsa dismissed so much of the criticism of Rasputin. From their perspective, I'm sure it seemed like yet another example of the sort of BS people believe about those in power. The sort of thing you don't give credence to by addressing. Except that, in this case, that seems to have been a mistake.

So I also find myself thinking about what the best way of handling it all would have been. Should have been.

I also wonder, sometimes, why there was so much blatant lying going on. Like... I get how rumors can get exaggerated and twisted. Anyone who has played the childhood game of 'telephone' should know that.

But to deliberately say something you know is false?

I said before that I kept wanting to label people 'good' and 'bad', except it sometimes seemed like it was more a matter of 'a mix of black and white' and 'a mix of even more black, though still some white.'

To add another layer to this, I can't help comparing the events over 100 years ago to the world of today. Oh, not in any obvious way. But that feeling of conspiracy theories growing, and taking on a life of their own? Of the truth not mattering in the slightest?

Of everything balanced on a knife's edge, ready to tip one way or another at any second?

Yeah... that's eerily familiar right now.

So, anyways. Finished the book. Liked the book. Lots to think about.

And, of course, I started another one. This time it's about Stalin, because I've found I sometimes get interesting insights when I read a different book on a somewhat similar topic. Not sure how quickly I'll read it, but that tactic is already showing itself... as I try to place Stalin's childhood experiences and some of the comments on Romanov policies towards Georgia (and a bit of foreshadowing about the fall of the Romanovs) into the context of Rasputin and the history I just finished.

Edit: oh, and what the heck was ip with their police? And administration, in general? Like, the police were investigating Rasputin. Then stopped. Then started again, and followed him for quite a while... But only some of this seemed to be done with the knowledge of the tsar and tsarista? Clearly they weren't as in control as you'd think for an autocratic system. And even though that seems like an obvious statement, in some regards, I always thought that had more to do with the challenges of one (or two) rulers administering an entire nation and not so much that the police seemed to do their own thing? 

Oh, and Merry Christmas

Since that article caught my eye, and I wrote a post for the first time in ages, I suppose I should give a quick update. And wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Seems everyone's schedules were better suited to celebrating Christmas early, so I was visiting the fam yesterday and a few days before, but came home last night. My poor puppy has been on antibiotics since Thanksgiving, and making sure he gets his daily dosage has been a real pain. (also worried about whether it'll do the job, since we didn't get a definitive diagnosis, and the costs, but for now he's mostly fine).

Being home alone for Christmas day itself is kind of weird, but I called various relatives (even though I just saw some of them) and it's been okay. Got to talk with my sister about the latest Star Wars movie, played some Christmas music, caught a few good Pokémon..

So quiet, but kind of relaxing. 

There's some potential changes in the works, maybe, but I don't want to post anything public until it's more likely to happen. 

So - Merry Christmas everyone :) 

Alienation

I don't necessarily agree with his analysis of the causes here, or the proposed solutions, but I think this article captures something very important about what the average person experiences in the world today -

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/josephbernstein/in-the-2010s-decade-we-became-alienated-by-technology?__twitter_impression=true

One of the best quotes:

“Alienation online — and perhaps offline as well — is not ingrained,” he wrote. “It comes from a reflexive assumption that powerful political and media institutions don't care, won't listen, and will not respond.”

Don't care?

Won't listen?

Yeah. And like that study a few years back, about how much the wealthy are able to influence policies and law (and how little the average American does. As shown by how there's still been little to no change on hugely popular policies like changing marijuana laws), too many people feel like what they think doesn't matter.

In a weird way, that's what some Trump supporters feel. Weird in that they then support a guy who doesn't really have their best interests at heart, but I guess I should give credit for making them feel heard or something.

Anyways. 

Alienation. We are seeing the effects of mass alienation, and those feelings seem to manifest in a variety of dangerous ways. 

I just wish that the people who could do something to change that - the ones that don't seem to care, or listen, or respond - saw that for the problem it is and actually addressed it. 

Doggie Health Problems

So over Thanksgiving, the people who were housesitting for me had to take my youngest dog - Phoenix - to the Vet ER.

He had a fever of 106, was pretty much not eating or drinking. Or moving.

After a few days with an IV, and antibiotics in the IV, he was doing much better and I was able to bring him home... but we didn't really know what the root cause was.

He'd tested positive for something (neospora, I think?), and the antibiotics clearly helped...

But when he was first brought in they said he had almost no white blood cells. Or platelets.

Like, possible diagnosis had ranged from tick-bourne illnesses, to genetic immunocomprise issues, to fighting off a severe infection somewhere.

At a check up last week, they'd checked his blood and had seen the white blood cells returning, so that was good.

But today, well... Today they said he was running low again.

Which means that we haven't found the root cause, and he's not really okay. He's fine, for now. Still on antibiotics (and trying to avoid eating them when I give them to him). He's acting more like his old self, energetic. Playful.

But it will probably come back unless we run more tests.

And here's the thing. I don't like putting a price on my dog's life, but I'm also not comfortable committing to paying whatever it will take to fix this. Because I've already spent over $1000, more like $1500-2000, on his care and treatment.

If I knew that doing a ~$700 CT scan would find the problem, and that treating it would only be a bit more, I would totally do it.

But we're talking about tests, when we don't really know what's wrong in the first place. Maybe that will find it, maybe it won't.

And then, once we do find it, we have to treat him. Which could mean surgery (if it's an infection in his head, for example). Which would be... what? Another $1000?

I'm already annoyed that this set me back (wanted to spend this whole year paying off debts, and all that. Now that I've graduated and am gainfully employed.) If this had occurred in another year or two, I think I'd have been fine. But... right now? It's like the cliche - two steps forward and one step back.

There's always some unexpected emergency.

So I have this possibly gigantic bill coming. Or maybe not. But at what point should I say it's too much?

Ugh.

He's so young, though. And otherwise seems in perfectly fine health. Like, how can I not agree to doing whatever it takes?

Some days...

Some days I really wish I didn't have to struggle within these constraints. (And yes, I know I'm already better off than most.)

What would it be like, to have the resources to do what I truly want to do in life? What would it take, to get there?

And can you get there, while still being a good person? ('cause, you know, very many of the ones we hear about in the news don't seem to have managed that. Seriously.)

Barr's Disturbing Statement on Policing Communities

Plenty of people have been talking about how wrong Barr's comments are, but nobody is quite capturing the sheer stupidity of his remarks.

There are a lot of complex issues here (as always, when discussing police and minority communities - which is primarily what he's talking about, even if he focused more on protestors) and I don't want to diminish them...

But government monopoly on violence is part of what they do.  And if you utterly abandon policing communities, they will come up with their own way of policing themselves. 

It could be an anarchists dream, I suppose. Or you could see organized crime fill in the gaps (like in Mexico), but outright abandoning communities creates space for that sort of thing.

In other words, this is how you lose your monopoly. 

Idiots. 

Why are so many of our so-called leaders so utterly lacking in wisdom? 

Rasputin - Some Musings

I've been reading a history book on Rasputin, which has been interesting for a variety of reasons.

I'd heard about Rasputin before - who hasn't? - but never really looked into the details. I just knew a story of some dark and sinister figure that was eventually murdered in a rather spectacular way. That is, if I recall correctly, that he was stabbed (and/or shot?) and an attempt was made at drowning him, and he only finally died of hypothermia on his way back from that. Or something like that.

So it's interesting to see what a historian can make of the details, their assessment of what is likely fact or fiction, and what it all means.

It also provides some interesting insights into Russian culture/history, though I have no idea how much of it would still be relevant to today. I vaguely recall learning that Russia's relationship with their eastern edges was a bit like our own relationship with our expansion into the American west, and it was interesting to see that Siberia was more than just some freezing cold place for political exiles.

What's weird, to me at least, is that our Western notions of right and wrong are so at odds with some of the values here. Like, I keep wanting to label someone 'good' or 'bad', even though I know it's not realistic, but it still catches me up in odd ways.

Like some of what Rasputin did for the tsar and tsarista seem - positive. Encouraging a weak ruler, building confidence, etc. But, as an American, we've never been to keen on the authority of the crown or any such nonsense, so Rasputin trying to discourage the tsar from bending on certain issues seems short-sighted and foolish to me. Especially given what I know is coming... better to bend a little, then have the revolution they eventually got, and see the murder of the entire Romanov royal family. Right?

And then there are some of Rasputin's opponents. Like - Rasputin himself seems a complex and mysterious figure, hardly a shining example of holiness. (Some of the historical accounts of his relationship with women are downright disturbing). But the people who opposed him seem hardly any better. Spreading malicious lies, making up facts...

And, well, some of his former-friends-turned-enemies were conspiracy theorists that honestly seemed to believe that Elders of Zion bs. Is conspiracy thinking that engrained? They hardly seem like principled (or holy) opposition to a demonic Rasputin, when they seem about as bad as our own neo-Nazis.

These perceptions of Jewish - and foreign - conspiracies just seemed so... widespread. (That's not even touching on the deep strands of mysticism and whatnot that Rasputin tapped into. Iirc, something similar was going on in the West at the time, with mediums and seances and whatnot being quite popular.) Why did so many people buy into them? They seem so ridiculous to me, on the face of it, but too many of the figures in this account who buy into them seem to have real influence.

And while I find myself sympathizing, a bit, with the royal family's desire for privacy and unwillingness to listen to the wild rumors and whatnot when it came to Rasputin, it also seems somewhat foolish for anyone in a leadership position to fail to address public perceptions, even if they do seem erroneous. How much of the way this plays out is because of poor public relations on their part?

To add another layer of interest - as accusations and rumors fly, I find myself thinking that Russia back then was dealing with what we're dealing with now...

Information warfare, where it's almost impossible to sort fact from fiction, and people spread misinformation for their own personal gain.

Command, Change, and Trump

The comments on command apply to more than just the military, and describes exactly how Trump alienated his bureaucracy.

If there is a Deep State, Trump created it. And this is how.

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2019-11-20/trump-is-picking-a-losing-fight-with-the-navy-over-gallagher?__twitter_impression=true

Fascinating

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614689/ghost-ships-crop-circles-and-soft-gold-a-gps-mystery-in-shanghai/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

They'll Drink the Sand

I try my best to make sure I have diverse feeds, and something recently made me realize I was seeing/accepting certain viewpoints that I shouldn't.

Namely - far too many people deride Trump supporters as 'uneducated and/or racist hicks who can't be reasoned with' (or some variant thereof), which honestly just feeds into the narrative on the right of 'coastal elites who look down on hard working Americans', and I found myself thinking about why those 'hard working Americans' don't seem to support the policy suggestions that are most likely to help them.

This isn't to say the most common explanations are entirely wrong, necessarily. We've seen such blatantly racist actions in the last few years that I've had to accept there's far more support for that than I'd previously believed. And it's true that a college degree is a significant factor in political views...

But I'm reminded of something I came across when I was reading up on modern slavery. Reminded that in these places, where the person in charge pays so little (and then loans out money for emergencies, like for health issues, or weddings, and the like), that many of the people who grow deeper and deeper in debt accept the burden of that debt.

They don't want to skip out on it, even if it's unfair and burdensome... because an obligation is an obligation, and they want to pay their debts.

THAT is the attitude that makes people look down on forgiving student loans. I get why and how student loan forgiveness can be a great thing, and not just because I might be able to benefit by it... over and over again we hear about how 'millennials are killing x', and things that essentially boil down to 'we aren't consuming enough'... but how can we consume more when so many of us are burdened by crushing debt? How can millennials buy homes when they're paying the equivalent of a mortgage every month in student loan debt? I mean... I'm luckier than most. Or made better decisions than most, depending on how you want to look at it. Doing ROTC, getting an Army scholarship, and various other things have put me in a much better position than most of the other people I know...

On the other hand - how does someone wind up with over $200K in student loans, anyway? I've never even come close to that level of student loan debt. Maybe if I'd gone to an Ivy League school? Or gone straight to grad school after an undergrad? And why is someone agreeing to take on that level of debt, in the first place? Didn't they look at the average income in their field and figure out how much of a burden it would be?

So the thing about jobs, and creating a booming economy, and discussions on student loan forgiveness and whatnot, is that to some Americans none of that matters. The macroeconomics behind it, the systemic issues (like the rising costs of college, and the way wages haven't kept up with inflation) - none of that matters.

Because people chose to take on certain debts, and are now trying to get out of it.

They don't want freebies, they want 'good' jobs (i.e. jobs that pay well enough that they can afford the things they want.)

Now, there's a whole bunch of other stuff going on. I know, for example, that there was one study showing that support for welfare is associated with white perceptions of minorities.

And the desire for 'good' jobs means you'd think there'd be more support for increasing the minimum wage, especially when the economic boom in cities that have done so shows that at this particular point in time there's an economic case to be made for doing so (in different circumstances, you probably would see the negative consequences so me people predict for raising wages. I don't agree with a blanket statement saying it's always a good policy to do so, but if/when people working 40+ hours a week still need food stamps and/or welfare to make ends meet then a case can be made that people aren't being paid their full economic value. And, again, it's not exactly shocking that people aren't consuming as much and the economy isn't doing as well as it could. Not that those whose income is tied to the stock market necessarily believe that.)

It seems such a shame, to me at least, that so many people who just want to make a good living seem to fall for the con-game Trump is playing. Like that BS about saving jobs at the Carrier plant in Indianapolis, or coal mining, or any number of things where he has talked the talk and utterly failed to walk the walk.

It reminds me of that line in The American President -

People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

Trump, to me, is that mirage... and our current political elite has failed so drastically that people are crawling through the desert towards that mirage, and trying to drink sand.

I think the cynicism in Shepherd's response is the heart of the problem, here. Do we - average voters, the bulk of the American electorate - know the difference between a mirage and true leadership? If we do, then if you believe strongly in a cause and it fails to gain traction, is that because you're missing something and/or not messaging right? Or is this true:

People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.

In which case, you - the one who knows better than all those idiot people out there - are justified in doing whatever it takes to make the 'right' policy  happen, because people don't know what's good for them. (This, btw, is the 'elitist' attitude people on all sides of an issue can fall prey to.)

interesting

Though I'm not sure it's going to be as disruptive as the author claims, it's still worth thinking about -

https://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2018/09/16/a-tsunami-of-disruption-is-coming-and-its-not-ai-or-anything-else-in-the-hype-cycle/

SJW

Saw this on Twitter today, and it reminded me of something I've thought about expanding on. Might right a longer post on it, or not.

"Moral philosophy starts with the question, how should we live our life. 

Moral wisdom starts with the realization that we don’t already know the answer."

- Shelly Kagan https://t.co/10nZaL8txw

That IS the defining question of religion, I think. 

How should we live our life? 

What are our obligations? 

To God? 

Ourselves? 

Our neighbors? 

The Bible mentions poverty around 300 times. 

Homosexuality? Maybe, depending on how you translate it, 7.

The Bible is clear, Christians should be the strongest social justice warriors. 

This!!!

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/10/31/regime-cleavage-229895

The Harvest

I was reading something today that reminded me, again, of a Bible quote -

"For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes." 

My reading was discussing the growth of, well, I'd call them radical reactionaries, since I don't think they actually hold to conservative values (like Russell Kirk's sixth canon, since they reject 'existing traditions and customs' they don't like.)

Anyways, I think we are seeing the fruit of that particular tree. I think they have to have a high degree of cognitive dissonance to look at the fruits of their labor and call it good... 

Too bad people are really good at finding ways to believe what they want to believe. 

A Never Trumper POV

I kind of want to stand up and applaud:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/trumps-tweet-makes-me-proud-be-human-scum/600685/

Impeachment and Social Media

I generally try not to post political stuff on Facebook (I do more of that here, tbh, where I can write long rambling things that most people don't want to read. Let's me put more nuance than you generally get elsewhere).

I don't want to be like some of my relatives, that spit out so many political memes that people start filtering them out. 

But... 

Its important, sometimes, to make it clear that you disagree. Where silence can be taken as agreement, and people don't follow politics as closely (and apparently some 40% of people get their news from FB), it's sometimes more important to speak.

And while I don't generally like Democratic leadership, I think Trump is seriously threatening to undermine the Constitution right now.

Its not about Democrat vs Republican, it's about whether Congress can use the powers given it in the Constitution to rein in an out of control executive. Will our checks and balances work? Or not?

I could probably go into greater detail on how the Executive branch has grown in power over the last century. How Trump is, in some ways, just blatantly doing what others have done... Just to a far greater degree, and with no pretense of it being anything else. (or maybe that's the cynic in me coming out. Even if there wasn't anything legally wrong, Hunter Biden getting paid a lot to do little - the way other connected people do - is yet another example of how the rich perpetuate their built in advantages, and part of why Democrats don't seem to be on the side of the 'little guy' these days) 

But...

That restraint was important. It set a limit, of sorts. They at least knew they had to at least try to make it look like it wasn't just about helping themselves. (And probably were able to convince themselves, in the process. Like the training my previous job gave on avoiding conflicts of interest, it can be hard to recognize one when you're in it.)

I don't know. I started reading Accidental Presidents, and the historical perspective is interesting. We haven't had members of Congress get into fist fights, for example. And a recent twitter thread (app update seems to be missing the ability to add the link to text, so here it is - https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1186468302400507904?s=19) made me realize that there's a lot about the post civil war history that I didn't know...

So it may be an exaggeration to say that this is the most dangerous time in our history. But when the President tries telling his people to ignore congressional subpoenas, or says the Emoluments Clause is phony, and threatens to use his ability to pardon anyone who breaks the law to get what he wants done, he is showing over and over again that he has no respect at all for the Constitution.

And I don't know how anyone can claim to be 'conservative', or a patriot, and continue to support him.

Then there's the mess he made with the Kurds, and the way he hasn't met a dictator he doesn't like. 

He's doing more to undermine America than anything that the Left has done. 

Posting For Future Reference

My aunt shared this on Facebook -

https://www.umnews.org/en/news/bishop-gay-daughter-sent-him-back-to-scriptures

And it fit with some thoughts I may or may not post about in the future, so I figured I'd share it here. 

Various Meandering Thoughts

Today has been a mixed bag - the weather is gorgeous. Just utterly, awesomely, beautiful out.

But when I read the news, it feels like the world is on fire.

I see that dichotomy in other things, as well. Like - I have a job, and it pays well enough that I'm paying off some bills and other things, but then there are other things I want to buy and am holding off on, because it's not quite in the need department. Like a new couch - mine's a bit broken, but it's possible I'll be moving within a year, so if it can last until then I'd rather just get rid of it here and get a new one at the new place - or replacing the over-the-range microwave now that the handle broke off. (Or maybe I can repair it? I'll have to look into it. It'd be nice to get some new appliances, but I it's more of a 'nice to have' then a true need, I suppose.)

I think the hardest part, though, is that feeling that it's all futile, sometimes. Like taking one step forward and two steps back, or vice versa. Things are better, but then there's always some unwanted expense somewhere. Whether it's furniture, appliances, dental, replacing a roof (I think it's okay for now? but probably needs replaced soon-ish.)

I don't know whether it's better or worse to imagine being in a place where none of that is worrisome. Like, how awesome would it be to have the resources to just do whatever? Replace the roof - and add in solar panels like I want? Get the new appliances, and not just whatever is a reasonable expense... go for the really fancy refrigerator with the door-in-a-door and built-in computer where you can have a family calendar and whatnot. Get the couch with the built-in USB charging ports...

Someday, I say to myself, as I do the responsible thing and convince myself not to spend money I don't really have. Someday.

But that's not why I started writing this post. Because I know that 'someday' isn't just wishful thinking. A lot of people tell themselves that, and that 'someday' never happens, but... eh. Well. Tech pays well enough that I'm fairly sure it's just a matter of time. For me, at least, and for such modest wishes. (Not so much for the 'someday' on my dreamhouse, ofc, though who knows? Life's been a bit of a crazy ride so far, and it's not over yet.)

I started writing it because - well, because the world does seem like a raging dumpster fire, and it's hard to feel like anything I do or say matters in changing that.

There are so many things I could rant or rave about - domestic politics, our betrayal of the Kurds (again), the Hong Kong protests - it's like we're just overwhelmed with awfulness, everywhere you look.

But this time I want to rant about something different, because the world is full of people speaking out about all that other stuff (though whether it will make a difference is another story entirely).

When I was on my modern slavery kick, they were talking about how economic slavery happens today. With charcoal makers, brick makers, and more...

And it's not something new. We've seen these tactics before, with company towns and company stores, for example. Basically, you pay people a pittance, and then you offer a way of covering all the unexpected expenses they can't afford on their pitiful wages.

Charge them for transportation to remote charcoal making locations, and an arm and a leg for the food they eat there... and then pay them so little that they wind up owing you.

Or 'generously' offer to give them an advance - to help pay for a sick family member, or to pay for  a wedding - and then trap them in debt that they have little chance of ever getting out of. Oh, and pass that debt down generations for good measure.

Lo and behold, soon you have a group of workers that you utterly control, that's dependent entirely on you, and the dark side of human nature tends to rear it's ugly head.

I think, sometimes, that this is why our Founding Fathers valued small independent farmsteads so much. (And I wonder, sometimes, if the term 'wage-slave' says something about the loss of independence and freedom, as more and more of us are dependent on corporations to make our living... and makes it harder to take time off to protest or speak out.)

Some people note these things, and seem to think it's all deliberate. That, for example, student loan debt is a way that the rich and powerful keep students (historically the most likely to protest) too afraid to speak out. Or that healthcare, for example, is tied to your place of work so that they have another way of keeping you in line if you try to hold a strike for better wages.

I... have a hard time believing it. Not that the end result isn't the same, but that the rich and powerful really came together and said "you know what would be a good idea? Forcing people to go into horrendous debt to get college degrees. That'll keep 'em from causing trouble"?

I just- don't really see it. It's like... when you get large and complicated forces at play, you can get unintended consequences. When it works to our benefit, you can call it Adam Smith's 'invisible hand', but it doesn't always work to our benefit.

This is part of why I like studying all this weird and complicated stuff. I like trying to make sense of this complex, interrelated world, and get a better sense of what's connected where. The modern world is a 'wicked problem', and if you ignorantly go mucking around with it you're not going to get the result you want. (Like Trump, who famously doesn't study any of it, and then goes and creates the current disaster with the Kurds, and Turkey.)

Alas, even though I've amassed a somewhat decent-sized knowledge base, I haven't exactly found a market for it. Again with the 'does it even matter what our opinions are these days? Nobody seems to be listening... ' feeling. Cue fiddle playing, as I dramatically press my hand to my forehead and sigh. "Woe, woe is me!"

Sometimes, though... sometimes I just wish... I don't know. That it didn't seem so damn inevitable that The Powers That Be would grow out of touch and corrupt.

Those examples of modern slavery, with the charcoal and brick industries? I sometimes worry that that's exactly what we're coming to, as wages fail to keep up with inflation and our system continues to help the wealthy get wealthier and the poor get poorer.

It seems less a sign of a conspiracy, and more just people just doing what seems natural given their circumstances. It's just the circumstances of wealth and power always seem to lead to the same problems, eventually.

The Bible has a lot to say on that, btw, which is also why it's ironic that those who claim the loudest to believe in the Bible all too often support policies that go against it. Like that whole "Nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and the stranger".  In other words, don't try to take every last cent, but leave a portion of your profits for those in need and foreigners. (Actually, there's a whole lot in the Bible about being a 'good shepherd'. I've even thought about posting a bit about the term 'husbandry', with it's implication of care and cultivation, and what it means to 'husband' something... and how we seem to have fallen away from all of that. Husbandry is nurturing, you know? And I'm fairly sure the term 'husband' has something to do with this, which means its supposed to be about caring, cultivating, and other nurturing activities.)

But anyways. The inevitable decay of the upper classes tends to resolves itself. Eventually. The question is just "how messy is it going to be?"

I just wish... I dunno. Wish the people currently benefiting from the system were wiser, and didn't keep pushing things to the point where things inevitably get messy.

This

https://thebulwark.com/dear-republicans-is-this-the-idol-to-whom-you-have-sold-your-souls/

Also...

This is part of why the Dems suck.

Don't get me wrong. Student loan forgiveness would benefit many (right now, myself included), and our medical system is a disaster.

But Trump appealed to people in part because the normal Powers That Be have screwed things up pretty badly. Even worse, they're so stuck in a bubble they can't even see the how or why of it. Trump has been a disaster, but he wasn't the 'politics as usual' where the wealthy and powerful keep making rules in their favor.

Pointing out that his policies have been a disaster for farmers and blue collar workers, and that the rich and powerful have just gotten worse, will help.

At least, for those who aren't already fanatics, or have bought into a twisted version of Christianity where they think being led by one of the least Christian politicians is just because 'God works in mysterious ways' and not some sort of warning sign that you've strayed too far.

Don the Con

I was trying to remember what convinced me Trump was truly awful as President.

Like, I try not to let my biases get in the way, and I remember feeling like the protests shortly after his inauguration were premature. You have to let him show how he's going to lead, after all.

On FB I mentioned something to a relative about one of those things.

It was Trump's claim that he 'saved jobs' at a Carrier facility in Indianapolis. Now, I've got family in the area, and some of them are blue collar, so it's the sort of thing they like. But as most of the follow up stories show, he didn't really save much of anything.

The impeachment is important, but tbh most Americans have trouble caring about anything outside the US.

I think his opponents need to hammer him on how little he's actually done. He's a con artist - Don the Con - and I've never understood why so many people fall for it.

Really Upset Right Now

Something happened this week that shook me...

I really hate saying it that way. I don't know, like it's showing weakness or something.

Let me explain what happened.

So my Little, from Big Brothers Big Sisters, generally comes to my house after school. She's then picked up by her grandmother.  Last year (while I was still a student, so generally home at the time) she got here around 3:50, and was gone by 4:10.

More or less. Sometimes her grandmother was late, or other things happened.

This year I have a job (yay!) and aren't at home. No big deal, she's old enough to handle that.

One of her classmates lives in the area, and sometimes hangs out with her.

Anyways. This week her grandmother was out of state, visiting relatives, and wasn't there to pick her up at the usual time... so my Little has basically been chilling at my place until her mom gets off work.

Tuesday I got off work and called her up, asked if she wanted dinner before I took her to her mom. We didn't have a lot of time, so I wanted it to be quick.

I get  home, and she and her friend are outside my house... and freaked out because some white SUV (or was it one of those trucks with the cover for the pick up bed? I'm not sure... I saw it, and it was definitely big and white) had been acting weird. Slowed to a crawl, turned around, slowly drove past a second time, then turned into the parking lot of a nearby business. The girls also said something about hearing them say 'grab them' or something, but I dunno. Were the windows down? I wasn't there...

Anyways. Like I said, I did see a big white SUV in the parking lot, and it sure seemed to drive off soon after they saw me looking.

Now, my Little didn't come Wed. I think they were freaked out enough that she basically stayed at the school, though I'm not entirely clear on the details. She was here yesterday, no problem.

Today, at work, she messages me. Her spelling and grammar isn't the greatest (and it's messaging, so people aren't as picky what with autocorrect fails and all that) but I'll quote it exactly:

"Their was too old people across the street ask weird questions and it was a red van idk what they were doing but i figured I would let u know"

Her grandmother is back, btw, and had already picked her up so she was no longer there. I asked her what sorts of questions, and she said "Like do I live their and if they could have my hair if they could cut and that I was beautiful"

And, even if you don't know anything, I'm sure that sounds plenty creepy to you all... but I've been through a kick or two where I read up on organized crime (terrorists get funding that way, and other reasons) and human trafficking (the book Somebody's Daughter is informative. I hate to say 'good' about such a depressing topic, but worth reading) and it sounded all too much like what human traffickers do.

Except this wasn't some black and white text, with people I've never met, in some place like Las Vegas.

This, if it's what I think it is, is right on my own damn street, in my own town, and potentially targeting vulnerable girls like my Little and her friend.

It makes me angry, tbh. Scared and angry, though I hate saying that.

I wish I could just shake them and say "what the hell are you thinking? What do you see when you look at these girls? Do you even see them as human beings? I mean, you can't possibly, otherwise how could you do what you do? How do you look and see - what? a commodity? Money? - and not see young girls who have a right to live their own lives, ones without assholes like you in it."

The Good News and Some Thoughts On Current Events

Had a couple of things I thought about writing here. This article, from a conservative perspective, brought up quite a few thoughts on my end...

But now that it's time to post, I'm just not feeling it.

It just feels like... I dunno. Like there are forces at work that are determined to take us down the worst path, and they don't want to listen. Nobody wants to hear it.

So I'll write about the other thing.

Anyone who has been reading my blog has probably picked up on my interest in history (among many others, but those are less relevant to this post.) It's interesting to try and imagine what life was really like in the past, because we have a tendency to project onto it our own experiences... so it's hard to really understand what life was really like back then. Like Rome - most of us know Roman myths and legends, but our understanding is not the same. Romans apparently took their religion seriously, were devout in their own way, and it's hard for us to think about their beliefs that way. To us, legends of Jupiter, Minerva, and the like (more commonly, to me at least, known by their Greek counterparts Zeus and Athena) are more like folktales. Myths and legends. Ancient stories that have been passed down for centuries, but not beings that we believe in.

I never claim to be an expert, of course, but I filter various things I've read through my own understanding of people, and one of the things that has struck me is... how do I put it?

In the Old Testament, Abraham (or Abram at the time) asked his wife Sara (later Sarah) to say she was his sister in order to avoid trouble.

Think about that. Think about a world where someone was likely to murder you in order to take your wife. A threat that was commonplace enough that Abraham expected it and came up with a plan to avoid it. (A plan that involved letting a powerful man claim his wife for his own.)

It reminds me of all the strategizing and calculating that we think we need to do in order to make it in this imperfect world. Machiavellianism. Realpolitik. The attitude that "I got mine, how you do?" and "If you were in their position, you'd do it too."

So for Christians, Jesus came and overturned all that. He said that "the first shall be last, and the last shall be first."

He didn't succeed in a conventional and worldly way. He didn't make himself rich, or overthrow Roman rule and become a worldly King of the Jews (though apparently that's what some of his followers at the time expected, and our religion was shaped by some of the reconciliation we went through when it didn't happen).

He died like a criminal. Crucified on a cross.

And then you get the resurrection... and suddenly his disciples (who had mostly seemed interested in that worldly success, and kept missing the point of his sermons; who just a few days earlier had all fled, with Peter denying Jesus three times... ) were going around spreading the Good News.

From a historical perspective, there's no real evidence of what happened back then. It does make me think, though, of Napolean alleged quote that -

I have inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic devotion that they would have died for me . . . but to do this is was necessary that I should be visibly present with the electric influence of my looks, my words, of my voice. When I saw men and spoke to them, I lightened up the flame of self-devotion in their hearts. . . . Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man toward the unseen, that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space. 

Something mysterious happened, something that turned ordinary men and women into apostles willing to risk their lives... and their message was welcomed, was greeted joyously....

And I know all the Christian ways of saying what that message was, but I think at the heart of it was this:

Nice guys don't finish last.

Okay, that's the catchy way of summarizing it, drawing on the rather familiar saying that "Nice guys finish last", and it's meant to be far more inclusive than that.

And perhaps 'heart' isn't the right word, since the commandments Jesus said were most important were

Thou shalt love thy Lord, thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind

And

 Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

But important though that is, it's not the part that made people go crazy for the story. (I mentioned early Christianity and fanfiction, and if you want a sense of that... look up the stories that never made it into the Bible. People were sharing and telling Jesus stories like crazy, though only a few were accepted into the Bible.)

So yes, we should all strive to love our neighbors as ourselves (and heal the sick, and hang out with prostitutes and tax collectors. You know, like Jesus did.)

But we're supposed to remember to be good people, to strive for that... and when the real world rears it's ugly head, when it seems like we just have to do wrong in order to survive - to practice realpolitick, or do whatever it is we're trying to justify because 'those evil _____ are winning and we have to do this  or all is lost' we're supposed to remember that Jesus won despite 'losing' and dying like a criminal.

We're supposed to have faith, and resist worldly temptation.


Which is why I find the current state of affairs so horrifying, as the article I linked to above touches on.

When you think the battle "must be fought by any means necessary", when they are willing to overlook all the signs that someone isn't a good Christian because they think that's what it takes to win...

They've pretty much missed the entire point of the Book they claim to revere.

Women in the Bible

This seems in keeping with some of my earlier posts.

Enough

B"when The recent house vote in North Carolina is like a game of football where one team calls a timeout, then takes the ball and runs to the endzone while the other team is huddling together...

And they dare call it a touchdown.

One of the foolish Republicans responsible even said this quote - apparently without any awareness of the irony - that "when we stop being a beacon of freedom, hope and democracy then the terrorists win"

Yes, and you're so focused on getting your 'touchdown' that you don't care that YOU ARE DESTROYING DEMOCRACY.

It especially disturbs me that so many people in power either don't get that, or don't care.

I hope North Carolina voters send a clear message, and refuse to vote for anyone who was party to this.

A Side-Note

A fanfic idea haunted me, so I actually tried my hand at writing one.

Okay, more than one, technically.

I guess I've had some modest success at it? I mean, I've got 851 kudos (for all my fics combined, few though they are) and a number of positive comments. It's a far cry from the most popular stories, which have something like 18,000 kudos... though those stories were generally written a couple of years ago, so they've also had more time to build up.

Anyways, in the sense of 'I blog to help clarify thoughts in my head', I've written all the stuff I had plotted out for my current fic...

And I've gotten comments like "I can't wait to see what happens next." Or "I wonder what will happen next."

Yeah... so do I.  So do I.

I'm not sure I'll continue it, but I also hate leaving it like that when I apparently have engaged readers wanting more.

So idk. Maybe I'll have to figure out what the changes I made to the official story will mean for the characters in my fic.

Ugh. I might have to throw a bit of Naruto stuff in here just to brainstorm that out.

On Story-Telling, Fan Fiction, and My Own Experiences...

I read something on social media, which in all too typical fashion has proven impossible to find again, where someone claimed that fanfiction is the modern version of telling fairy tales. (Or folk tales, idk. Makes it hard to search for the article when I can't even remember the exact wording).

This... this makes a surprising amount of sense to me. Like, back when most people centered their lives around agriculture, and the seasons, winter was a time when... well, there wasn't much else to do. The crops had been harvested, it was too cold to plant, and a family spent quite a bit of time hunkered around whatever heat source they had...

And told each other stories.

To pass the time. To entertain.

We get this notion nowadays, with books and movies and tv shows that have an official plot, that stories are... solid. Immutable. The author wrote it however they wanted, and that was that.

But folk tales were living, breathing things. They changed as society changed, as someone decided to tell it a little differently.

I have been around the fanfiction community for a long time, though I hadn't realized that for a long time. That is, one of my close friends in college is a writer.

Not professionally, but she's always had some sort of story on her mind. Original characters, world-building...

And she writes fanfic.

The somewhat recent attempt by Tumblr to restrict pornography brought out posts on fanfic history that made me realize that I'd been influenced by it for a while.

See, my friend tended to move to whatever social media fanfic was on. She was on LiveJournal back when that was a primary site for it, and during one of our regular visits she basically sat me down and had me create an account. (I remember wondering when the heck I'd ever use it, since I hated journaling assignments in school and didn't think I'd ever use it. Wow, did that change!)

And when LiveJournal became a more hostile place for fandom communities, many of them migrated to Tumblr. So I followed my friend there, to stay in touch. Found another friend there, as well (she also writes fanfiction.)

It's interesting to me, as a *mostly* outsider, because I've never really thought of myself as a fiction writer. I enjoy reading. I devour books. And sometimes, I'll admit, I've come across a rather poorly written book and thought I could do better.

But creating worlds? Wanting to explore a particular character? Wanting to write?

Mostly I write to help clarify my own thinking, as various ideas swirl around in my head.

I suppose there's another element to this, as well. That I, for the most part, have never felt as though I needed something more than the official story.

This all changed when Naruto got it's claws in me, and hasn't really let go.

I don't tend to write about that much here. Maybe it's because it still seems... silly? Not nearly as important or interesting as Roman history, or fighting terrorism, or computer security.

But that's all background info, a bit of a prelude... Because I can't really talk about the topic I want to if that's not understood.

Reading fanfiction is interesting, because fans create their own explanations for things. 'Fanon', as in 'fan canon', instead of the official canon. They'll fill in the blanks of a story. Create in-depth character analysis of characters that only showed up once or twice.

Some of it's good, some of it's bad, but the way the story changes in fandom is... fascinating.  Like, in Naruto they talk about how he was isolated and treated badly, but they don't really go into a lot of detail. I mostly go with "isolation is harmful in it's own way, consider that exile is considered a horrible punishment, and that's enough"... but fanon has interpreted that as "merchants raise prices and give him shoddy goods on a regular basis" and some even go so far to have him chased by lynch mobs. Like, I don't think he'd be as loyal to the village as he was in canon if that happened on a regular basis, and as I said isolation is pretty damaging in it's own right, but whatever. Write what you want to write, and I'll read what I want to read. (Quite a few seem to like using Naruto to write stories of abuse, and I can see that it can be cathartic and helpful to the people writing it.)

Everyone's free to disagree with any sort of character analysis, and write their own stories differently. (I am also glossing over some of the heated arguments, particularly when it comes to pairing various characters with each other. Fandom is not all sweetness and light. Oh, and fandom is also apparently a smutty, smutty place. Far smuttier than what we tend to see in normal story telling. Which is also why so many anti-pornography moves tend to hurt fandom communities, thus leading to their exodus when poorly designed attempts to reduce pornography start destroying fandom communities.)

Anyways. That post about fanfiction as modern folklore changed my thinking on a few things. Because, you see, that's what a lot of writing was like back in Roman times.

It was fairly common to write something and attribute it to a better, more well-known public figure... or take a story you like and modify it.

It's not like they had the notion of copyrights and plagiarism, not in the modern sense.

And when stories are fluid like that, the way they grow and change says something about the society telling them.

Hence why the discussion of Romulus and Remus was so interesting. Given how bloody Roman politics became, was the fratricidal murder saying something about Roman society?

And - on a topic that, well, Bible literalists will truly hate - this is also how a lot of early Christianity worked.

Like, they so loved the story that they expanded on it, built on it. Created lore about minor characters that only showed up once or twice. Wrote things that they attributed to famous names (like St. Peter) and circulated it.

And the stories that gained widespread acceptance said something - about society, about human nature, about (if you're religious) our relationship with God.

Not because it was word-for-word written by whoever it was alleged to be written by, but because these stories resonated with people. To use fandom terms - when someone comes up with an idea that fans really, really like, they often say that they 'accept it as headcanon'.

The stories, letters, and writings that grew into 'official canon' became canon because so many people accepted it as headcanon.

Which I think makes for a far more interesting discussion than taking it literally.

An Interlude (Or, I Picked Up a History Book and Have Thoughts)

"Violence was increasingly taken for granted as a political tool. Traditional restraints and conventions broke down, one y one, until swords, clubs and rioting more or less replaced the ballot box. At the same time... a very few individuals of enormous power, wealth, and military backing came to dominate the state..."

I picked up SPQR, yet another book on the history of Rome, and I'm really enjoying it.

I've read various books on the Roman empire, off and on over the years, though I by no means claim any real expertise. The similarities (and differences) to today are compelling, as well as the way events from so very long ago can still shape the world as we know it today.

But I will admit, most of my previous reading was more focused on... well, the fall of Rome. Or with a more militaristic focus (like the Ghosts of Cannae, though iirc it covered far more than just a battlefield analysis. As the title implies, it also talked about the impact of that battle on the Roman society as a whole, and especially the veterans.)

I have to admit, we get so focused on why such a large and powerful empire fell apart that we don't always ask "how did it grow so powerful in the first place?"

And, again, the differences and similarities to our own history are... just fascinating. Like, I vaguely knew the myth of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome who were suckled as babes by a wolf. I never really looked into it in detail, so I didn't know that Romulus apparently killed his brother nor did I consider the meaning of such a founding story... and it's implications for fratricidal violence. The author seems to do a good job of explaining some of the dissenting historical opinions on various topics, and what evidence is and isn't available, so for the most part this is treated as a story.

And still has interesting implications, in the sense of... "why include that in the story?" Like... stories change to meet the needs of their particular time and place (I've got some interesting thoughts on that, but that's for another time. Maybe.)

So they could easily have dropped Remus altogether - which apparently some Romans did.

or they could have focused on the brothers, and dropped the fratricide... and just indicated that Remus died early. Which, again, some Romans apparently did.

If it was based on any sort of historical incident, (which might have been, but we don't have any evidence for it and can't really say for sure what did or didn't happen) then one would almost expect the victor - Romulus - to try to make the whole thing sound better than it did. After all, victors write the history.

It's interesting, though, because even though the founding stories are completely different, I can see parallels to the way we interact with our own founding story. That is, Romans apparently debated what it meant. Not just the Romulus-Remus event, but the two brothers were apparently outsiders who moved to Rome? So, like, it raised questions about what it means to be Roman, and who is an outsider... much like our own history of immigration, and the questions that raises about what it means to be an American.

I'll admit, though, that this story dovetails quite nicely with some of my own... hmmm... biases? Headcanons? Heuristics about human behavior?

That is - as I've mentioned before, I was raised Catholic. And 'catholic' means universal. So I notice differing trends between exclusion (often tied with a sense of elitism and specialness) and inclusion.

Like, everyone likes to feel like we're somehow better than everyone else. And various organizations tap into that, whether it's secret societies with messages saying "you can be one of the few that really know!", or "you've proven you're smarter", or whatever.

And then there's other organizations that gain power by appealing to the everybody. They can gain a wide following when they don't try to exclude anyone (though it can also be harder to define what you stand for, I think.)

It's sort of that centripetal and centrifugal force I referenced before... pushing and pulling on a social scale. And so, for example, you get fundamentalist muslims who decide that various other fundamentalist muslims are somehow incorrect and even worse than those who don't know any better since they know so much and somehow still believe wrongly, to the point where many of these groups fracture into smaller and smaller groups that are violently opposed to pretty much everyone. (Or, in Christian history, you somehow wind up fighting a war over transubstantiation)

And, on the other hand, you get people broadening the group to the most basic set of beliefs. For Christians, well... belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and all that. Which, if you define things that way, means there really isn't much difference between Catholic or Baptist or Episcopalian. (Or, to continue the Muslim analogy - so long as you believe and practice the Five Pillars, you're Muslim... and the distinctions between Shi'a, Sunni, and all those fractured fundamentalist groups don't amount to much at all so long as the Five Pillars are observed.)

Another personal headcanon is, well...

That oftentimes the side that 'wins' is the one that screws up the least. Like, it's not saying everything they did is right or correct... but they did enough 'right', and whoever the other side is did enough 'wrong', that they came out ahead.

The reason for such a complicated headcanon? We still have to think critically about history, and finding the 'root cause' is darn difficult. Especially since some consequences don't appear immediately, or the responsible party gets lost... particularly in large and complex organizations.

So, like, here's a theory based on that headcanon that I have absolutely no way of testing whether or not it's true. St. Paul had a great deal of influence on the early Christian church, for better or worse. On the one hand, what I would consider some of the worst beliefs about women are attributed to some of his writings. On the other hand, he's also the one who opened up the early church to gentiles... going back to that 'inclusion and universalism' thing.

After all, Jesus was a Jew who taught and preached and had disciples who were all also Jewish, and it was quite a stretch to suddenly say that everything this Jesus guy said and did was relevant to people who were in no way, shape or form Jewish.

Read up on some of the early debates, and there were questions like "do Christians have to observe all the Jewish practices? Like circumcision?"

And St Paul, for better or worse, essentially decided the question in favor of inclusion.

So I, personally, think he showed rather human fallibility with the part about women, but that he probably did well overall because he weighed in on the side of inclusion. (Those who believe the Bible is divinely inspired but written through fallible people would understand that, but this goes in direct contradiction of the notion that every word in the Bible is as God willed it, and that what I just said is cherry-picking at it's worst. To which I say - we're reading a translation of a language most of us don't speak, in a cultural context that tbh is quite foreign to the world we live in today, and we're already cherry-picking what it means. I'm just not fooling myself about it.)

But, you know, I'm not a religious authority figure, so I don't expect anyone else to agree with me here.

Anyways.

Early Rome seemed to grow powerful in part because it was inclusionist... in an ancient world where most cities were xenophobic, Rome seemed to allow pretty much anyone to come. (And, btw, realizing that most of these 'ancient cities' were about the size of a small college town like Bloomington, IN or Champaign, IL, is trippy. Suddenly those grand and glorious battles that helped early Rome become big and powerful were... as though Champaign declared war on Bloomington, IL? Weird... )

That's not to say Rome was all that. Like I said, it's as much about who screws up the least as anything else, and Rome definitely had slavery and developed a history of military aggression. (Though at least most of those slaves had a path to citizenship? Maybe? The way they practiced it was very different from our more recent history.)

Anyways, that's enough babbling for now. I'm enjoying the book, it makes me feel like this was the book on Roman history I've been looking for all along.

Edited to add: inclusion vs exclusion is not just a religious thing. On social media I've seen some posts talking about "terfs", and the word "queer", and whether asexuals should be part of the LGBTQIA thing, and it's the same old thing in a new setting - exclusionists trying to mark boundaries and cut people out, and inclusionists saying "I hated feeling left out, so I'm not leaving anyone else out."

Something to Ponder

What is the difference between power and control?

Epstein, Maxwell, the .05%, and a bit of a tirade.

The Epstein story bothers me. A lot. Though in some ways Ghislaine Maxwell bothers me even more. So I figured I'd write a post about it, but I feel the need to go into some of my own personal heuristics before doing that.

But first, a bit of  story.

In college I had a job as a cashier and grocery bagger, a typical low-paying job to help pay the bills while I went to school. I sometimes was responsible for bringing back the shopping carts, and, well...

People are lazy. They leave them all over the parking lot, and not always in the cart corral like they're supposed to. I was sitting outside once, on break, and noticed a customer taking the time to clean up some of them... and sort of realized that even though the constant mess can give you a pretty negative view of human nature, there are often other people - good people - who do more than their share to try and clean it up.

So messes, well... it's more about how many people choose to leave a mess, how many decide just to take care of their own stuff, and how many people do that little bit extra to help. More people being lazy? Lots of carts not in the right place. (tbf, someone once said that there are reasons, sometimes good reasons, for leaving the carts where they shouldn't be. Mostly to do with disabilities or somesuch... though if that were the case I'd expect more of the carts by handicapped parking, so I'm pretty sure not ALL of the mess is for legit reasons.)

Leaving that, for the moment, some heuristics.

Things are always more complicated than you think, and issues are very rarely black and white. (Though just to add to the confusion, sometimes they are.)

People generally like to think they're good people, so they will rationalize whatever it is they're doing. If you want to know "how can they think that's acceptable!?!?" it helps to consider what sorts of things would make you think it's acceptable. You generally won't be that far off.

Ummm. And most people, well, tend to go into auto-mode and forget they have things like free will, so they'll do what 'everyone' does, and accept the norms of the people around them, without necessarily questioning it or deliberately choosing to create the systems/structures they live in. (Not an excuse, per se, but it frames the issue a certain way, and encourages thinking of systemic solutions instead of rather superficial and ineffective ones.)

So. Epstein, right?

In some ways, he's the perfect caricature of everything we hate about the wealthy. A criminal - yes, a criminal - who seemed to think his wealth and status protected him from the consequences of his bad behavior... and who seemed to be right about that. After all, how many people knew or suspected what he was doing and just... looked the other way? Deciding to ignore it, and continued to allow him into their social circles, or take his political money, or whatever?

This is where (if the article is true) Ghislaine, in some ways, bothers me more. A criminal is a criminal, after all. But the person willing to overlook all that? Who decides he really is somehow better or should be allowed to get away with it? Who thinks the young girls he's screwing are 'trash', and thinks nothing of it? Those are the ones that make their assessment true... that wealth and power can make up for a lot of sins.

But let me add another little bit to this. I've seen my fair share of anger at the wealthy, people pointing out just how outsized their influence is. There was one meme going around talking about the one percent, and it made some comment about how "it's 12 people".

This seems to me to be an exaggeration. I mean, we talk about the 1% a lot, but one of those fancy income graphs pointed out we're really talking about the .5% (the rest are more likely to be doctors or lawyers who are affluent, yes, but not at the ridiculous levels that really get people mad. And, well... .5% is more than 12 people. In a nation of 327.2 million, you're really talking about 1,636,000 people.

Still a ridiculously small portion of the population, but a heckuva lot more than 12. Enough for their own social norms, their own ways of thinking. And given (as I think seems obvious) that most of them hang out with each other, they have a good chance of living in their own little bubbles where they only take seriously others like them, and develop their own norms and whatnot. You know... since they've got enough wealth to avoid all the peons, they generally aren't flying economy on airplanes, or waiting in lines at amusement parks, or grocery shopping for themselves. (Hence all the stories about presidential candidates who don't know the price of milk, or have any sense at all of what it's like for the vast majority of us.) Some of this is speculation, of course. It's not like I have any great access to that sort of life.

Anyways. I figure like any reasonable large population of people, and over a million is large enough for that, you've got the same sort of mix I described with the grocery carts. You've got some who do bad things, you've got others that wouldn't cross that line but are mostly just minding their own business, and still others who are doing really great things. (My hair dresser gets some rather wealthy clients, and she says they're some of the nicest people... and I can believe that.)

The problem is that, collectively, what proportion is there of each?

Right now it feels like the world is, to continue with this grocery cart analogy, just full of carts left all over the place.

Yes, I know there are some amazing philanthropists out there, and they're doing fantastic things.

But we still have people dying because they can't afford insulin. We still have people working two or three low-paying jobs while the rich keep getting richer, and there is story after story of people who have more money than sense doing stupid things that keep making the world a worse place.

It's not just the Epsteins and Maxwells, either. I'm having the darndest time finding the quote, but I believe I heard a major figure in media tell his people that the only black person he wanted shown in the news was one in cuffs. (Maybe that's an exaggeration? I can't seem to find a source, though there are plenty of sources for media bias in general, like the classic one where white survivors of a catastrophe are 'finding' things whereas black ones are looting. Little things like that which shape perceptions with an unfair double standard. Also consider how the Stanford rapist was shown with a rather nice school pic, whereas the pics using for black men tended to be arrest photos or other negative pics. I'm sad to say that I generally didn't notice that sort of thing until it was pointed out to me, but it's definitely there. Also sad to say that in this hyper-politicized times people would rather claim Snopes isn't reliable than address this sort of thing.)

I do wonder how the people in positions of power and influence on these matters can honestly like what they see in the mirror, but whatevs.

Seems too many of those in the .05% are either so busy with their own lives that they aren't doing anything about it, or are just willing to look the other way.

Still, they'd have to be living in a rather serious bubble not to realize how much anger and resentment there is at them, for exactly that sort of reason. Like, you're in a position to do things we can only dream of, and yet you'd rather ignore the Epstein's among you, look the other way, and when you hear stories about people dying because they can't afford insulin just shrug and say 'not my problem'.

It's almost the same problem for other things - like trash and whatnot. So long as you can send it elsewhere (like a third world country), and don't have to deal with massive piles of waste in your own backyard, it's all out of sight and out of mind... and not your problem.

Push the consequences on those less fortunate, and go about your lives thinking you're somehow better than everyone else.

Bah. I sort of want to hear some stories of the good ones, just to restore my faith in humanity, and think that we're not entirely doomed.

Another Update

I went to Defcon last weekend, which was a lot of fun. The only downside is that I caught some sort of bug and am now sick.

The sniffling and coughing isn't too bad, I suppose... but I also apparently lost my voice. I haven't been able to speak above a whisper for a couple of days now.

Not exactly how I planned on returning from vacation, but I suppose between airplanes and crowded conventions it's not entirely surprising. (As usual, there's a 'Defcon Crud' that refers to getting sick at Defcon, not too different from the 'Kuwaiti Crud' we encountered flying to Kuwait. I'm sure it all has something to do with encountering different viruses/bacteria than what we're used to at home.)

Aside from getting sick, though, I had a blast. Saw some talks, a demo or two, got to solder a badge and pick some locks and bought some cool things. There was a Voting Village, which showed various voting hardware and had talks discussing cyber security for elections. Apparently local election officials have made a lot of changes since the 2016 elections. I won't take their word for it that things are necessarily secure, but I figure I at least need to look into it more before flat out saying it isn't.

There was also a Car Hacking Village, and an Industrial Control System (ICS) Village, and a bunch of other things that seemed interesting. I asked some questions and got some recommendations on books to read for further study (like the Car Hacker's Handbook. This publisher, btw, had a vending booth t the convention with all sort of intriguing titles.)

Oh, and got to see some relatives, who are amazing btw.

See, one of my aunt's has a stepdaughter that lives in the area. I don't think I've met her since I was like, idk, eight or something at my grandparent's 50th (or 40th?) wedding anniversary, though we've been facebook friends for a while and I know one of my other aunts and uncles visit her when they come to Vegas for his poker tournaments.

So I figured, wth, I'd let her know I was in town and we could do lunch or dinner or something. Apparently she then told some of my other aunts I would be there, and since they (and another uncle) were living in Arizona they decided to drive down and visit. My cousin kept this all entirely as a surprise, so I had no clue they were coming.

They showed up at the restaurant where we were, and my aunt asked if we'd mind sharing a table. Someone was recording me when they did this, and apparently my reaction was priceless. Like... I was totally not expecting to see my aunt there, and almost didn't recognize her. Then I was processing her request, which was really strange (who asks to sit at another group's table? Especially when there are plenty of empty tables?) and then it dawned on me who it was and...

Yeah.

So that was pretty awesome, and they stayed in town a couple of days so I got to hang out with them more after Defcon wrapped up on Sunday. (My flight left Monday, so I had a bit of free time.)

I also... well, I didn't end up gambling At. All.

Not even once. I didn't expect to win, or anything, but I thought I'd figure out how much I was willing to lose and do something. Just because it's, you know, Vegas.

But between the convention and visiting with relatives I just didn't really have the time. And that's okay.

I picked up a few gadgets, though it may take a while before I can play with them. Did you know that there were USB-C cables that look exactly like your usual charging cables, but that can be programmed to deliver some sort of malicious payload?

I figure I'll eventually use one of my old phones, configure some sort of keylogger program or something, and then see how it all works.

I don't have any intentions of using this sort of stuff outside my own home, but it's pretty hard to defend against things you don't even know exist, and I'm curious. Like, how would the malicious payload look on my phone? What does it take to recover the data?

What sorts of things could indicate someone's using this irl, and could I spot it if/when it happens?

Oh, and someone I ran into on Friday said she wasn't going to use her badge for another conference (the Diana Initiative, smaller and covering some of the same things but more focused on women in the industry), so she gave it to me. In some ways, the smaller convention was nice... less of a crowd at the lock picking and soldering villages, and it's nice to see other women interested in the things I am.

Lock picking, like some of the other stuff I mentioned, is not something I intend to use seriously... people say they do it more for the art of it? It just seems like a cool thing to know, and understanding how locks work is kind of neat. I don't claim to be any good at it, but I did pick up a set of practice locks - they increase in difficulty level, so once you master one you go on to the next.

I did do a stint with the Ethics Village, a part of Defcon put in by my local group. Sat in on a 'coffee talk' with Joshua Steinman, which was interesting.

There was plenty more to do and see. I didn't participate in any of the (many, many) Capture the Flag events, for example. And figuring out what's up with the convention badge is apparently a regular thing.

So plenty of things to do, lots of stuff to learn, and I had fun... even if I'm currently slightly sick and unable to talk.

Job Update - Part II, Business Applications

Earlier I wrote a series of articles discussing what happens when we connect to a website, and I used an analogy of the post office to describe how messages get routed. I talked a little bit about what goes on at the business side of things, and now I want to go into much greater detail.

Let's say you want to shop online, or transfer funds, or any of the zillion things we now do over the internet.

You open a browser on your phone, tablet, laptop or desktop and connect to a URL. In my previous series of posts I described how this gets translated into a series of messages that get routed to the 'front office' of a business, which then sends your information on to their fulfillment center or distribution center for processing.

There's a bit more to it than that. You see, the business will have one machine (or building) that responds with the webpage you requested, but in order to fulfill your request it needs to know a few things. Like your login info, and whether you're authenticated as the person authorized to view your account info. Then it needs to find your particular information (out of all the other people who have accounts there) and let you see yours, and yours alone. Plus there has to be a method for adding new customers, or removing old ones, and getting your billing information, and more. 

So one machine may be dedicated to offering up the requested web page, and another machine may handle authenticating login information, and still another machine may hold the database with all your order history or transaction history, and still another may be secured more tightly because it holds everyone's billing information, and so on and so forth.

But wait, there's more!

If the business is reasonably large, it may have thousands or millions of people interacting with their websites on any given day. So they need a way of handling all that traffic. PLUS, people get pretty upset when a service isn't available. If they want to order something, or pay a bill, or whatever they want to do it Right. Now. and they aren't going to be pleased if your website crashes.

So businesses need redundancy, because you as an individual may survive if your hard drive crashes, but a business might not. So there are ways of having two or three machines acting like one web server, so that if one fails the other two can pick up the slack. And there are things called 'load balancers', that help make sure that all that traffic gets routed to the servers in an even manner. Otherwise, one server might get so overwhelmed that responds to requests more slowly, while another is sitting idly by.

But if you have two or three machines doing the same thing, you also have to make sure they're synchronized and share the same data sources. So instead of having a hard drive on one machine, you'll probably store everything a shared Storage Area Network (SAN), which will also have built in redundancy so that if one of the drives fails the data can still be recovered.

Oh, and you also have to worry about making sure that transactions happen once per request, and only once. That is, if something crashes while a request is being made you have to make sure that the request finishes processing (or doesn't process at all, undoing anything done before the failure). That way you don't get charged twice for the same order or something.

All of which sounds like a lot, when you think about it. But businesses are aware of all this and most of them have figured out how to make it happen (even if that sometimes involves outsourcing services, like using a cloud provider to manage your machines.)

Anyways. Three years ago if you had asked me what an application was, I'd probably have said it was something like Word for Windows, or Pokemon Go. You download some sort of file (most likely an .exe file, since it's an executable), install it, and it does stuff.

And learning to code meant I was much more aware of how complicated creating that .exe was. I mean, the Windows operating system has something like 50 million lines of code. Trying to figure out how all that fits together would be insane.

I knew that there had to be a way to allow multiple people to work together on a program that large, and I'd heard about things like GitHub, and understand the importance of version control. After all, I had the joy of trying to figure out why a change in one part of my program broke something in another part, and that was all just me. Trying to manage the efforts of five or ten different people all working on different parts of the program at the same time? That requires a good supporting structure in terms of tools (like GitHub), division of labor (who is responsible for which parts of the program), and procedures for deciding when something gets accepted into the official program.

Anyways, I've come to realize that at the business side of things 'application' refers to much more than just the lines of code that get compiled into an executable. Especially since more and more businesses offer up their applications on websites, which has several advantages. (i.e. the user just has to remember the website. The business can update the application as desired, and the client doesn't have to download and install any of the updates... they'll see the changes when they go to that URL. My company apparently used to offer a .exe program that our customers downloaded and installed, but I believe we stopped doing that and now offer it as a web application.)

Which means that, from the business side at least, an 'application' refers to more than just the code that goes into it. It also refers to the various machines required in order to make the website work, to include the databases, the processing of requests, and more.

And we're still not quite at what I'm doing.

See, businesses need a process for developing and maintaining their application. Something like the Software Development Process. There's apparently a lot of different ways of doing this, and you can follow the link to explore more on that. Most have some variation on the basics - i.e. figuring out what the requirements are, coming up with the code to do it, then testing, testing, and more testing before finally releasing it into production. And really, that last stage might be considered the final test, as anyone who's had to deal with bugs after an update can attest.

Each of those phases need their own version of the application. They might not get the heavy traffic that the official application does, so they may not need the load balancers and multiple servers, but they still need a web server, database, machine for authenticating users, etc. In other words, you need to duplicate the entire environment.

Not only that, but occasionally issues come up with the current (live) version. The one in production. Maybe a vulnerability was discovered, whether in the business's program or a third party's software used by the business, and a patch needs to be applied. Maybe an issue came up after the latest version was released into production. Plus if you've divided up the labor, you may need one environment focusing on a particular part of the application (like billing, or the website), and another environment focusing on something else. Whatever the reason, you need to have multiple environments for every stage of development.

And this is where I come in. My official job title is "Technical Integration Engineer". We've got, I dunno... maybe 40+ environments involved. Each with at least four or five different applications. I say I don't know because some of them have been retired or aren't currently in use, so I can't really say how many there are altogether.

Each of them have to deal with reboots and what we call a 'build push',  rebooting because (as you may have experienced) rebooting can clear out old data that causes errors and bugs otherwise, so it's good to regularly reboot your machines. And a build push? Well, if you've made some changes and want to test them, you have to incorporate them into your software build and then push them into the environment for testing. Then you can try doing all the actions a user would and see if it works or not.

I'm still very much at the beginner stage of my job, so right now most of it is about dealing with any sorts of issues with rebooting or pushing a build. It also means monitoring how much memory we're using and clearing out some of the older and more obsolete files if we start running out of space.

It often means working at the 'back end', that is... if someone in one of these environments is having a problem accessing a web page or performing an action, I'm checking logs or running scripts in the shell environment. Luckily, my predecessors have already created a bunch of scripts for our most common tasks. Mostly I'm just learning my way around, learning where to go to find the logs or scripts for which application in which environment, and what to do when one of the gajillion alerts comes up. (I learned about something called 'alert fatigue', and I think my organization really suffers from it. I've also spent a bit of time coming up with a system for my Outlook e-mail that I think is satisfactory. I already knew about creating rules to sort e-mail, but we get waaaaaayyyy too many of those for me to rely on. So I simplified it down and created some rules dividing things by environment, and sending all the automated e-mails to a couple of folders. Then I created some search folders so I can easily find any of those specific alerts or reports. Outlook was annoyingly unhelpful at doing some of the things I wanted to do, I'd love to place some of those Search folders near the folders related to whatever the alert was... and given that I repeatedly saw other people having the same wishes when I looked online for solutions, I think it's a pretty common desire... but I'm going to guess there'd be some complicated coding involved in doing so. Anyways... I put the ones the search folders I know how to address up in my favorites, so I can easily see when something new comes up.)

There's a lot more, of course. I'm still learning what various alerts and messages mean, and I'm sure I'll eventually be updating and/or writing my own scripts. I spend most of my time on the command line (or, well, with Linux it's the terminal for a Bash or Korn shell) and I'm getting pretty good at running commands like 'ps -ef | grep <xxxx>' to find whatever current processes have <xxxx> going on.

I think I can safely say that applications are a lot more than just the .exe file. That it contains the machines, third party software for synchronization or whatever, database queries, scripts, logs, and various methods for monitoring and alerting when issues develop... all of that, for each of the many, many environments...

And the back end is a complicated, complicated place.

Job Update - Part I, Background Info

I figured I'd take a bit of time to write about what I'm doing now, though I'm going to write for the (hypothetical) layperson that I used to be.

I suppose I actually need to start with scripting. Or rather, the command line.

If your around my age or older, you may remember how computers used to be. You may remember sitting in front of a computer screen and seeing simple text. No fancy pictures, no windows. No mouse.

Just a (most likely black) screen where you could type in whatever commands you wanted.

Windows... heh. Well, they've been around so long it's easy to forget what it was like before.

Windows make computers much more intuitive and easy to use. You can easily see menu options, select what you want with a mouse, and more. But the older methods are still there.

For instance, if you're using a Windows machine you can go to the Start menu and find cmd.exe. ('cmd' will generally find it, but there apparently are malicious programs that will call themselves things like cmd.bat, so just to be safe I like to type the whole thing in.)

If you open it, it will give you a little black window with some text and a blinking cursor indicating where you can start typing.

You can type in commands here, just like on an older computer. Although it's not as easy to use, once you know the commands it can actually be faster. Mostly because the computer doesn't have to waste any time displaying a window, or re-sizing it, or modifying it to show your menu options.

If you wanted to find your IP address, you can search through some of the menu options on Windows (I don't know them off the top of my head, but I recognize them when I see them. It's probably under Network Settings or Control Panel -> Network or somesuch), or you can just open up the cmd.exe program and enter 'ipconfig'.  Iirc. The command terminal runs shells, and there are lot more than just cmd.exe out there. Windows created their own Powershell, which does some similar things (and has some differences)... and in Linux you're more likely to use Bash, though there are plenty of other options (like Korn shell), so in Linux instead of 'ipconfig' it may be 'ifconfig' or 'ip addr' depending on what version you're using. I can generally look them up if I need to, but it's actually just faster to type whichever seems correct and enter one of the others if it doesn't work.

I don't really want to get into the difference between a command line, shell, or terminal, suffice to say they all give you a place where you can run commands strictly through text.

So... why'd I even bring all that up?

Well, the next thing to understand is scripting.

Basically any command you can do in a shell can be written in a text file and run at will. You may not get much out of saving a script to run 'ipconfig' to your computer, but if you consistently do the exact same series of commands it makes sense to write a script. It's faster (since the computer doesn't have to wait on your slow data entry) and more consistent (since it will never forget a command, or put them in the wrong order).

If you wanted to, let's say, make a back-up of a particular file every day... you could write a script to copy 'important_file.txt' and paste it in another location under the name 'important_file_bak_YYYYMMDD.txt'. You can even (generally) tell the computer to run that script at a particular time every day.

That way your file is backed up at least once a day and once you've set it up to run you won't have to do another thing. (Okay, you might want to create another script to clear out older copies. Otherwise you'll eventually start running out of space.)

Why did I explain all that, you ask?  I'll explain in the next post. :)