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Post by neil on Aug 3, 2020 19:34:07 GMT -5
white america never changes
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Post by neil on Aug 4, 2020 8:37:42 GMT -5
2.30
Doors, lids, covers, hoods, trunks. Open anything; but if it isn't understanding that brought you to the point, you've opened a Pandora's box. Guaranteed.
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Post by neil on Aug 4, 2020 10:15:20 GMT -5
3.30
I've always wanted one of these: 1993 SUZUKI VX800
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Post by neil on Aug 4, 2020 17:00:32 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 4, 2020 17:02:37 GMT -5
5.30
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Post by neil on Aug 4, 2020 18:32:34 GMT -5
6.30Post by upfromsumdirt on May 27, 2009 at 8:32pm A LEXINGTON LULLABY1.
eyelids flap open at 3am and tongue is a tarantula spinning words into dreadlocks
blackwebs are written from the nib of my pilot G-6 inkpen and robert johnson pulls hisself out from a tear-duct pours hisself down into a gut-bucket
hellhounds trail - claw and come crawling from closed pores howling poetic slang full of wolfwords fat with blackwidow bite
from a deep slump i awoke my head capped on crooked speaking sacrificial chickens in closed caption to the golden george clinton bust
my write-hand tithes to before bedtime maggotbrain done been my golden bull since i first got the touch-a-gray to grow good from my jetblackbeard
im weird/yeahyeah/done always been
and you can avoid my autodidacticisms all fucking day but at its end you'll hafta make amends/acknowledge how i pledge no allegiance to no unnatural neon
i am blacklight in boxer shorts and a ripped up redd foxx tshirt (you big dummy) - an ancestral glow even if my ankhs are all made of pewter molded in america
2.
rhymes are written to make an ivory tower wince
zeus spins in a grave (i guess its his, but it too could be just as borrowed) in the gravel of my tortured paragraphs - his soul sits at the kiddie table in the den
watching squarepants on nickelodeon when im feeding my festive faiths... i acknowledge little theatric distinction between a spongebob and a shakespeare
yeahyeah/every word is without a single ounce of romeo...
there is warfare where my where-fors should go but my sun-in-cheek is not an actual terrorist... if anything
i am an error-correctionist by the will of my wild haired creator i awake ready to distill penicillin from poison but instead
i roll over to kiss crys in the deepdark wrapping my arms around where she is the most ample/sampling the sweat build up beneath breasts... and i smile
close my eyes returning dreams to sender - that's the only kind of poetry that truly pleases.
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Post by neil on Aug 5, 2020 6:19:22 GMT -5
7.30
On discretion and other important things:
Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them.
3Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate[173] robe for him. 4When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.
5Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more. 6He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: 7We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.”
8His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said.
9Then he had another dream, and he told it to his brothers. “Listen,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun and moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”
10When he told his father as well as his brothers, his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream you had? Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow down to the ground before you?” 11His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
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Post by neil on Aug 5, 2020 6:22:43 GMT -5
8.30
Most Users Online: 108 (Jun 26, 2007 at 8:46am)
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Post by neil on Aug 5, 2020 6:37:31 GMT -5
9.30
WEDNESDAY 7:24 August 5, 2020
so the sun has sloughed over the horizon in no particular hurry it may need another cup of coffee while i have my first admiring the moon clouds in their proud new outfits hummingbirds zagging zigging flying in Morse code dit dit dit dot dash dash dit dot their hearts beating in a blur of shush and shunt the grass is tall and heavy with dew the garden thrives with yesterday's rain rich fragrant sunshine and the promise of care tomatoes cucumbers okra yellow squash acorn squash watermelons butter beans string beans and those long thing beans none of which i have lifted a finger to produce the work of others and i say what a good thing it is Sam has been combed is content and looks at me with slit eyes outside is Bibbles on the stairs is Roo in D's lap is Joe with LuRay is Poochie which be a dog-person him possessed of the most gracious personality i have ever encountered in a dog patient affectionate not prone to obnoxious barking an Australian Shepherd of mysterious provenance D and i have had as many as 10 cats in the house now down to 2 so it is a good thing that LuRay has brought her 3 - Sam had come to grieve he has lost 4 brothers this year a difficult year difficulty comes with the wind there is not place without it refuge is a wonderful truth shelter from the storm shade from the heat sanctuary from all the shouting take your shouting elsewhere
thank you i appreciate it best wishes
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Post by neil on Aug 5, 2020 7:50:38 GMT -5
10.30www.lawfareblog.com/contingency-planning-presidential-interference-election Tuesday, August 4, 2020, 11:14 AM Contingency Planning for Presidential Interference with the ElectionRobert S. Taylor is the general counsel of MCE Social Capital, which raises capital for micro finance and similar entities in approximately 40 developing countries around the world. Previously, he was in private practice, visiting scholar at Harvard Law School, and for eight years the principal deputy general counsel of the Department of Defense, including almost two years as acting general counsel. He can be contacted at R_Taylor@comcast.net. 9-12 minutes One of the great strengths of the U.S. military is its planning, encompassing contingencies big and small. With sadness, I urge my former colleagues in the military services and at the Department of Defense level to plan now for the possibility of actions by the president to disrupt the forthcoming election or even to vitiate the election results. It is distressing that we have come to this point, where strategic planners must prepare for serious threats to our democracy from the president of the United States, and where the military must be prepared—better prepared than recent events have shown it to be at present—to avoid becoming an instrument of the demise of the great American experiment in democracy and the long and uneven march to a just society. After the initial trickle of military voices decrying the president’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act to send the military into our cities becoming a powerful stream, it seems likely that the president and his enablers have abandoned—at least for now—thoughts of invoking the Insurrection Act. But the president and his enablers have found another way of usurping local and state control over law enforcement. They’ve sent first to Portland and now to Chicago, Albuquerque and other “Democrat-run cities” personnel from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ostensibly to protect federal facilities. The protection of federal facilities is a legitimate mission of DHS, but the DHS personnel have been deployed away from federal facilities, and have disrupted, detained, and intimidated protesters, whether they were approaching a federal facility or not. The president has even intimated that the federal agents have been directed to protect monuments in which the federal government has no legitimate interest. The DHS personnel are federal law enforcement personnel, unlike members of the military. But they are dressed in camouflage uniforms, and their presence in the streets of Portland and elsewhere seems calculated to suggest a military operation. The presence of federal officers in Portland has done nothing to bring peace to the streets and seems intended to perpetuate and deepen disruptions. This usurpation of local policing powers comes as the president’s abysmal performance of genuine federal responsibilities has led to cratering polling results and, most ominously, the president’s incessant drumbeat of attacks on the integrity of the forthcoming election. The president has refused to say that he would accept the results of that election, if he did not win, and he has even raised the prospect of postponing the election. Before the 2016 election, Mr. Trump also made statements refusing to commit to accepting the election results—as reckless and irresponsible as those statements were, he wielded no power at the time. Today, he is the president of the United States, wielding enormous power. This makes his statement a genuine threat to the rule of law and to the nation’s life as a democracy. The deployment of DHS officers has the flavor of a dress rehearsal for actions to disrupt and distort the upcoming election. The military, sadly, must plan how to respond if the president attempts to wield the power of the presidency to thwart the electoral process, whether through the Insurrection Act or through other means. Each military member, and every federal official, swears to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Under the Constitution, all “executive and judicial officers” of the United States and of the states likewise must take an oath or affirmation to support the Constitution. The president’s possible abuse of office to prevent his losing the election (both before and after the date of the election itself) would put such oaths to the test in ways that are completely unprecedented. How can today’s military members stay true to their oaths, and support and defend the Constitution? First, we must look to our senior-most political leadership, especially Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. He has a critically important role, and he needs to be aware that the judgment of history will be focused on him. He must make it clear that the department will not carry out illegal orders, no matter what the president says. He has done this before, when he stated at a Pentagon briefing that the military would follow the rules of armed conflict and not attack cultural sites with no military value, despite the President’s threat to do so in Iran a few days previous. Making it clear that the military is a creature of law is a vital foundation for the support and defense of our Constitution. Likewise, it is critical for senior military leaders—like the chairman of the joint chiefs, the chiefs of staff of the military branches and the combatant commanders—to reiterate that their loyalty is to the Constitution and to the nation, and not to any particular individual. What is an illegal order will sometimes be clear—for example, if Trump attempts to prevent the electors selected in the various states from meeting and voting, or if he attempts to prevent the Congress from receiving the votes of the electors, military members would clearly be obligated to disobey any order to effectuate his purpose. And if Trump refused to leave the White House, as soon as his term is over the military would be obligated to disregard any order purportedly issued by Trump. An order to delay the elections, which the president has no authority to issue, would likewise have to be ignored. But as the controversy over the president’s consideration of invoking the Insurrection Act showed, it is not always clear what an illegal order is. In the case of the Insurrection Act, the ability of the president to send in troops in the absence of a request from a state’s governor depends on questions of degree and judgment. More precisely, it hinges on whether the “domestic violence” occurring in cities across the country so hinders the execution of the laws of that State … that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection … The president might assert, without factual basis, that lawlessness and chaos meet this standard. But even if there were unusual violence, if that unlawful behavior is not directed at a particular “part or class” of people to “deprive[] [them] of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law,” the statute should not be read to provide authority. In the current situation, there are certainly law enforcement challenges, but there is not the kind of rampant lawlessness and chaos for which this provision of the Insurrection Act is intended. And there is no indication that a “part or class” of people is being deprived of their constitutional rights in any sort of general or systematic manner. Drawing the line between an organized effort to intimidate and subjugate a “part or class” of people to deny them their constitutional rights (think about Mississippi Burning in the mid-1960s) and random violence requires the exercise of some judgment. But when a blatantly unconstitutional motive—targeting the political opposition through force and violence—is proclaimed by the President, the task of determining the unlawfulness of such behavior becomes easier. To be sure, judgment under the Insurrection Act, in the first instance, is to be exercised by the president. That it is a matter of judgment for the president is not the same thing as saying anything goes. There is a legal standard, and if that legal standard is not met there is no power. Allowing the president to be the final arbiter of whether the legal standard is met would eviscerate the constraints of law on the power of the president. Total deference to the president would not preserve the separation of powers, it would destroy it, rendering the Congress’s lawmaking role a mere chimera. The closer we get to the election—the ultimate check on the president’s authority, with free and fair elections being the very heart of what it means to be a democracy—the more searing should be the review of the president’s exercise of judgment. This is true for the courts, but it is also true for the Department of Defense and our military—and indeed for all officers, state, federal and local, who have sworn to uphold the Constitution. Should the president issue an order for troops to deploy to the streets of Milwaukee in the weeks before the election, for example, personnel throughout the federal government should evaluate that order in the context of the president’s persistent attacks on the integrity of the electoral process, and his recent suggestion that the election should be postponed. Examined in that context, there is an obvious danger that any finding by the president that the predicate for deployment under the Insurrection Act has been met would be a disingenuous pretext for an effort to stifle voter turnout in a “Democrat city” so as to gain the electoral votes of the state. The entire chain of command, from the secretary of defense on down, must be prepared to exercise judgment and refuse to carry out a pretextual, and thus illegal, order. Similar concerns may arise, for other officials at the state and federal level, with respect to the president’s possible use of other authority for the unlawful purpose to disrupt or delay the election. And our courts, including the Supreme Court, must take the uncomfortable step of being willing to exercise judgment to uphold our constitutional commitment to choosing our presidents through elections, not force. The nation’s life as a democracy hangs in the balance.
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Post by neil on Aug 5, 2020 10:10:23 GMT -5
11.30My Note: This excellent article on Mark Tushnet's latest book "Taking Back the Constitution: Activist Judges and the Next Age of American Law" requires and understanding of the technical term "judicial activism." My understanding of the term was established by Cass R. Sunstein's 2005 book "Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts are Wrong for America," which I highly recommend to anyone(it is written for regular folks) seeking a handle on the bewildering planet call the Supreme Court of the United States, or SCOTUS. Sunstein defines judicial activism as interpretation of statute law and precedent in a way which comprehensively advances a political agenda. The title of his book was well chosen. Professor Sunstein is among the most highly regarded legal scholars in America, so you can be confident that you won't be fed a line of bunk. balkin.blogspot.com/2020/08/tushnets-taking-back-constitution.htmlTuesday, August 04, 2020 Tushnet’s Taking Back the ConstitutionStephen Griffin For the Symposium on Mark Tushnet, Taking Back the Constitution: Activist Judges and the Next Age of American Law (Yale University Press 2020). It probably did not occur to many people encountering Mark Tushnet’s early career work that he would wind up being something of a national treasure in constitutional law. Despite possessing the dubious virtues of unrelenting honesty and unfailing clarity, he is. I’ve read most of Mark’s books and for relevance and making a timely punch in the right direction, Taking Back the Constitution is one of the best. I hope we will have more. Although it may put off some normatively-minded scholars, I like Tushnet’s characteristic way of making arguments, which amounts to saying: “this is the position we are in” rather than “this is the position we would like to be in.” This means Tushnet’s analysis is firmly grounded in legal and political reality. He starts with the assumption that “[t]he Trump presidency shows that the conservative constitutional order has reached the kind of inflection point that produces a new constitutional order.” Tushnet means to survey the possibilities for constitutional law as the Reagan regime is ending in political time. But this does not necessarily apply to the judiciary, which exists in their own “judicial time.” In political time, one party regime replaces another, although Tushnet grants there may be a long interregnum in between. However, “judicial time” is different and the Republican justices who now control the Court will likely remain for decades. Tushnet’s book raises many interesting issues and I will not try to even mention all of them. But his general view of judicial decision making does deserve a comment. His is a contemporary version of legal realism, seeing judicial decisions as inevitably influenced by “political agendas or policy preferences.” Law obscures these determinants of judicial decisions with a bewildering variety of forms of argument or argumentative “moves,” as Tushnet puts it. Although this may seem to be a critique, Tushnet nonetheless works from an internal viewpoint that takes legal reasoning seriously without abstaining from describing the flaws of popular methodologies for making judicial decisions such as originalism. As a legal realist, when Tushnet looks at a serious methodology like original public meaning originalism, what he sees is an elaborate way of avoiding the reality that judicial decisions, especially with respect to ambiguous clauses, reflect the aforesaid agendas or policy preferences. Although he does not make the point in this book, Tushnet is well known for being anti-method when it comes to trying to improve constitutional argument (or scholarship) through the use of “theory.” From his perspective, we should just get on with it. We should not worry in an overly self-conscious fashion about how we make arguments within the conventions and tradition we already inhabit. This does not prevent him from adopting useful theoretical innovations, such as the recently advanced distinction between interpretation and construction. In my view, just as originalists have trouble seeing what a legitimate alternative to originalism looks like, as a legal realist Tushnet has trouble seeing that there might be genuine legal-related (not policy-related) reasons why academic originalists are concerned about the prospects for the rule of law in the United States. I don’t share their precise concerns, but I’m sure they are real. In Part One, Tushnet examines the relationship so far of the Roberts Court to the failing Reagan regime. To put it another way, he describes how the Court attempts to assist Republicans in maintaining it. He devotes attention to cases involving political rights, such as the campaign finance decisions and voting rights. He argues that they have consistently helped Republicans and hurt Democrats. For the Court, Republicans are the “home team,” as he puts it. In the same way, he looks at the constitutional law of race and issues of importance to the conservative movement such as gun rights and free exercise of religion. In Part Two Tushnet asks where the Republican Court might take us in the future. Because he views the Court as responding to shifting political realities, much depends on the outcome of the November election. This election might put the Court in the position of being the only branch of the national government controlled by Republicans, much in the same way as the 2008 election (for two years only, of course). If Democrats prevail, Tushnet thinks the Court will look for opportunities to cut into the possible entrenchment of a Democratic majority by causing trouble through decisions with respect to abortion and gun rights. They could also assist business with its anti-regulatory agenda. In this analysis, Tushnet assumes the continuation of total gridlock in Congress. One possibility he seems to overlook, particularly as he discusses the Court’s anti-regulatory agenda, is that Congress might actually get its act together under the Democrats through elimination of the filibuster. With the restoration of true majority rule in the Senate, Congress might actually be able to legislate in a way that the Roberts Court would not be able to easily overturn. In trying to forecast the future, Tushnet discusses recent doctrinal “moments” that got a lot of publicity at the time but then seemingly went nowhere. His examples include the Court’s crusades on behalf of property rights, federalism, and a “weaponized” first amendment. Here we may have a difference of opinion. Putting in question the state power of eminent domain certainly seemed to go nowhere, but I think there is an argument to be made with respect to Rehnquist Court’s federalism decisions having a highly consequential doctrinal and policy payoff under Chief Justice Roberts. Tushnet himself notes the impact of cases like Shelby County and voting rights cases generally. And it was also crucial to the largely overlooked part of the ACA case which created the “Medicaid option” for the states – a development Tushnet does mention which arguably by itself has deprived millions of Americans, particularly African Americans in the South, of adequate medical care – and during a pandemic! I think I understand Tushnet’s point. He is looking for evidence that the Court is interested in establishing a chain of precedents that would fundamentally reorder the structure of federalism. Like him, I think there is little chance of this happening. We should not overlook however that the Court’s federalism decisions have not only already had significant policy consequences, but consequences that are directly relevant for our understanding of the relationship between federalism and racial equality. I suggest issues of race are almost always relevant to federalism and vice-versa.
Tushnet makes the important point that Democrats have to think forward with respect to the Roberts Court. What the Roberts Court tolerated in the past when it did not appear that a new Democratic regime was consolidating will not be what it allows following a prospective 2020 victory. In considering a possible confrontation with the Roberts Court, Democrats might be thinking in terms of FDR’s conflict with the Old Court during the New Deal. But actually, as Tushnet says repeatedly, they are largely facing a Young Republican Court, a Court that is already moralized to serve as the brake on whatever their coming reformation may be.
Here Tushnet raises the issue of why Democrats have not placed as much weight as Republicans on controlling the federal judiciary without fully addressing it. I’ve heard various explanations, none of them very convincing. Tushnet alludes to one when he notices that Democratic presidents have to win support for their Supreme Court picks from a large variety of groups rather than just consulting the Federalist Society. Yet this is a question that deserves much more attention. Both Clinton and Obama had their chances to highlight this issue for their supporters and they just didn’t. It may well be true that Democratic presidents have more interest groups to answer to than Republican presidents. But why won’t Democratic presidents spend more time to alter this situation or, at least, the expectations of their own supporters? This, I think, is a harder question to answer than Tushnet lets on. Judicial nominations should matter more to Democrats but for a whole complex of historical reasons that should be interesting to unravel, they don’t.Tushnet saves his most important argument, a call for formal constitutional change, for the end of the book. Tushnet calls for “popular constitutionalism” (whether from the left or right) and contrasts it with rule by elites. I agree with him that the American public as a whole (although not necessarily on a state by state basis) is probably more egalitarian on economic issues than many elites are willing to admit or tolerate. And I agree that popular constitutionalism in an American sense is about promoting democratic self-governance. What I perhaps disagree about is that you can have the “popular” without doing something adverse to constitutionalism itself. Although some scholars resist this, constitutionalism American-style tends to be a supremacy system in the specific sense that the Constitution is regarded as the supreme law of the land and hence the high ground for all parties. If popular “constitutionalism” is understood as replacing the law of the Constitution with the law of the general will of the people, it will not necessarily be appealing to the those who are supposed to support it. Hence I see a tension, which Tushnet may not, between supporting the “popular” or democratic side of constitutionalism and what both conservatives and many liberals understand as the “rule of law.” Of course, when Tushnet argues we should make greater use of the Article V amendment process, I can only agree as it is my position as well. But he also argues that we might try amending the Constitution somehow outside Article V, and I see little reason to think this could happen or that it would be a good idea. By the end of the book Tushnet’s arguments resemble those made by progressives at the beginning of the twentieth century, particularly in western states like California. They decried their experience with gridlock and thought state legislatures in particular were unreliable and corrupt. They argued for the use of “direct democracy” – the mechanisms of referendum, initiative, and recall. The nature of the challenge facing Tushnet or anyone else, including myself, advocating popular constitutionalism can be measured by how many constitutional scholars (especially in California!) believe the results were desirable. In my experience in writing about direct democracy, they don’t (although Ariel Kleiman may be an exception). They believe in particular that direct democracy has been harmful to racial minorities. Yet Tushnet has some excellent counters to doubts about involving the people directly in constitutional change and this section alone is worth the price of the book. I agree completely with Tushnet on the need to pursue alternatives to the present Constitution and alternative ways of pursuing constitutional change. He says we need “realistic utopianism,” on both the left and right. I agree but my term, offered in a slightly more practical spirit, would be “amendment politics.” In a regime where amendment politics is a player, it would be understood that every political party and political movement needs to stake their claim to constitutional change by offering a series of formal amendments. Proposals to amend the Constitution have the virtue of concentrating the mind and forcing responses. It so happens that during the Reagan regime, they have been far more prevalent on the conservative right than the liberal left. As many have urged over the years, I think the time has come for liberals to stake their own claim to formally altering the Constitution. Posted 9:30 AM by Stephen Griffin
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Post by neil on Aug 5, 2020 10:15:39 GMT -5
12.30
This bears repeating:
Here Tushnet raises the issue of why Democrats have not placed as much weight as Republicans on controlling the federal judiciary without fully addressing it. I’ve heard various explanations, none of them very convincing. Tushnet alludes to one when he notices that Democratic presidents have to win support for their Supreme Court picks from a large variety of groups rather than just consulting the Federalist Society. Yet this is a question that deserves much more attention. Both Clinton and Obama had their chances to highlight this issue for their supporters and they just didn’t. It may well be true that Democratic presidents have more interest groups to answer to than Republican presidents. But why won’t Democratic presidents spend more time to alter this situation or, at least, the expectations of their own supporters? This, I think, is a harder question to answer than Tushnet lets on. Judicial nominations should matter more to Democrats but for a whole complex of historical reasons that should be interesting to unravel, they don’t.
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Post by neil on Aug 5, 2020 10:28:29 GMT -5
13.30balkin.blogspot.com/2020/08/we-just-never-want-to-connect-dots.htmlSaturday, August 01, 2020 We just never want to connect the dots between the Constitution and the threats to our national survivalSandy Levinson Delaware Senator Chris Coons has an excellent column in the Washington Post warning us that the presidential election is not the only one we have to worry about in November. If current polls are trustworthy, we may well know on November 4 who the next president will be because Biden will in fact smash the sociopath. On the other hand, he points out, we might not know about the control of the Senate for weeks, given that a lot of the votes may turn out to be much closer (especially if, as I predict, the dreadful Susan Collins and her fellow "I'm not really a Trumpista" enablers will start advertising the necessity of Maine and other state Republicans to vote for the GOP senators in order to build a barrier against Joe Biden, who will in effect be conceded the presidency in the face of Trump's increasing unpopularity). Who, he asks, will be the Senate Majority Leader on January 3 if some of the votes are still being contested? That's an all-too-fair question, alas. We might well expect to see marches in the streets of Portland, Louisville, Raleigh, and, who knows, even Austin, given the stakes of Senate control in 2020.
But what Coons, I want to say "of course," does not do is to point out that we may be in this truly regime-challenging dilemma because of the decision made back in 1787 to give states basic control over the election process. Over two decades ago, when Bill Eskridge and I published Constitutional Stupidities, Constitutional Tragedies, Jeff Rosen, now the CEO of the National Constitution Center (and professor at George Washington) picked as the stupidest feature this state control of elections, which, among other things, gives highly partisan state secretaries of state the ability to manipulate elections in favor of their own party. (See Florida, Georgia, and Ohio, among others states.) We have probably the worst overall system of election administration in the so-called "democratic world." There are lots of reasons, but one of them is surely this decision of 1787 and our being trapped in its implications. To be sure, the Elections Clause of the Constitution, plus Sections 5 and 2 of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, respectively, or, for that matter, Section 2 of the 26th Amendment, which could easily be read to empower Congress to prohibit the outrageous decision of GOP minions in Texas to allow only geezers like myself--over 65--automatically to be able to vote by mail and to reject the argument that the fear of Covid-19 should be enough to allow younger people to ask for mail-in ballots. But we all know, as night follows day, that the GOP members of the current Congress are totally and completely unwilling to do anything to clip the powers of GOP states to maintain GOP power. By any means necessary! John R. Lewis will very likely get the Edmund Pettus Bridge named after him, but hell will freeze over before Mitch McConnell and his collaborationist allies (including Susan Collins) will vote to renew the clearance procedures of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the GOP majority of the Supreme Court gutted in Shelby County. And, of course, only Congress can cure this problem because the U.S., unlike roughly half the states, does not allow genuine "popular sovereignty" by which "we the People" could wrest control of our destiny away from so-called "representatives" through initiatives and referenda (such as the one in Florida restoring voting rights to felons, a decision that the GOP-dominated Florida legislature is doing its utmost to negate via requiring the equivalent of a poll tax).
There is good reason to fear a partisan national election commission. Just look at the totally feckless one we've got. But most countries around the world, including Mexico, have figured out ways to conduct elections in a manner that does not threaten the legitimacy of the overall political system. As Coons points out, the U.S. has national "democracy" projects that offer advice (and observers) for elections all over the world. Now, it is advisable to bring in observers from all over the world to monitor our own elections, given the obvious efforts to corrupt them in order to maintain GOP power.
That's the world we now live in, and sooner or later we might begin connecting some of the dots between what Jack Balkin calls "constitutional rot" and the decisions made in 1787. What will it take for intelligent and concerned leaders like Coons (and many others) to realize that the Constitution might be part of the problem?
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Post by neil on Aug 5, 2020 11:27:54 GMT -5
14.30
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Post by neil on Aug 5, 2020 12:17:14 GMT -5
15.30NATIONAL LAMPOON pdfs - 1970 (the inaugural year) directory
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Post by neil on Aug 5, 2020 18:48:18 GMT -5
16.30 Today on "Who Asked For It?" ...
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Post by neil on Aug 5, 2020 18:57:41 GMT -5
17.30 Rick, Frank, and Stella - August 15, 2009 ||| They are gone, but not forgotten.
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Post by neil on Aug 5, 2020 19:03:44 GMT -5
18.30
tvtropes.org
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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad-hoc plot device" — David Langford, as a corollary to Arthur C. Clarke's third law
"Klingons and Romulans, they pose no threat to us! 'Cause if we find we're in a bind, we just make some shit up!" —Voltaire, The USS Make Shit Up
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Post by neil on Aug 6, 2020 7:07:35 GMT -5
19.30 Users Online in the Last 24 Hours 1 Staff, 0 Members, 39 Guests. neilWho are these people; or is it all the same people? Do fractions count?
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Post by neil on Aug 9, 2020 5:45:08 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 9, 2020 7:10:24 GMT -5
21.30 “This isn’t just a colonizing ship; it’s a death factory.”........................................................................................................................HULL ZERO THREE
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Post by neil on Aug 9, 2020 19:32:33 GMT -5
22.30www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/08/pandemic-coronavirus-shootings-gun-violence/ 4 hours ago The Pandemic Hasn’t Slowed America’s Other Public-Health Crisis: Gun Violence Mass shootings may be on lockdown, but the killing continues. Jacob Rosenberg Assistant Editor Last night, at least 21 people were shot at a cookout in Washington, D.C. Christopher Brown, a 17-year-old, was killed. Three weeks ago, nine people were shot in front of a restaurant in the capital. In July, there were four shootings in Detroit in which at least four people were killed or wounded. In Chicago, 14 people were shot outside a funeral home in late July.
As Americans locked down and classrooms and public places emptied this spring, there was speculation that one silver lining of the pandemic would be fewer large-scale shootings. But that has not happened.
In March, the number of people killed by shootings involving at least four injuries doubled in comparison with a year earlier. Perhaps this was the result of the lag time due to lockdowns rolling out at different speeds. In April, there was a major dip (24 percent) in the number of large-scale shootings. Yet since then, there hasn’t been a sustained decrease in the violence. The Gun Violence Archive has recorded 262 shootings with four or more injuries that have occurred across the country since April. In May, there were 59 such shootings, more than any month since the archive began collecting data in 2013. That was quickly topped by June (95) and July (87).
These shootings aren’t covered in the same way as the bloody rampages in schools, churches, stores, and night clubs that have come to be seen as an “epidemic.”
Part of the issue is which incidents are considered mass shootings. The Gun Violence Archive uses a broader definition than many outlets. Taking its lead from the FBI and criminologists, Mother Jones‘ own database of mass shootings defines a “mass shooting” as a single attack in a public place in which four or more victims were killed. This effectively codes out incidents like the one in Washington, DC, yesterday. (Unless three more victims die, in which case it would be considered a mass shooting.) Yet, the shootings that don’t get the mass shooting designation still cause a massive human and economic toll. And no matter how they are labeled, they’re key to understanding the current calls to change policing in America.
As Samantha Michaels notes in her recent Mother Jones feature on efforts to stem gun violence in Oakland, California, for “Black men between the ages of 15 and 24 in the United States, homicide, mostly by gunfire, is still the leading cause of death by far, killing more of them than the next nine top causes of death combined.” That violence, which often leads local TV coverage even as it’s ignored outside the communities where it happens, has been used to justify the aggressive policing which has in turn sparked the current movement to remake American policing.
More shootings, combined with the coronavirus, could fuel the argument that the solution isn’t fewer, but more cops. In Detroit, police shot two men while investigating the July shootings. D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham told the Washington Post that he thought that people released from jail because of the pandemic have been behind some of the recent violence. President Donald Trump has used the violence to call for increasing the presence of federal law enforcement in cities such as Chicago and New York.
The death and chaos of our current moment has perhaps muted our memory of past violence. It’s been a little over a year since the back-to-back mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, in which 9 people died; and El Paso, Texas, in which 23 were killed. Virtual memorials were recommended by Dayton, fearing an outbreak of COVID-19. In El Paso, residents marched, noting the white supremacy that fueled the rampage. President Donald Trump, who briefly entertained pushing for some gun control measures following those shootings, did not publicly note the anniversary of either.
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Post by neil on Aug 10, 2020 6:11:47 GMT -5
23.30www.gregbear.com/news.phpMessage from Greg 06/02/2020
I think it's important for all of us to speak out and support the aggrieved communities in their pain, and to emphasize their right to protest without fear of tyrannical intervention.
We're in a very dangerous time. I've never seen a moment in my history so fraught with fundamental political peril. President Pennywise, his voice rising with a mechanical twang from the gutter, has done his best to make things even more awful than they are. It is to weep, what I’m seeing now.
But even in these dark times, we must keep faith in America and hope to God that Pennywise will pass, and we can become a civilized nation again.
Remember George Floyd. Remember all the victims of racism, from before Tulsa to today.
And work this next election to cage the clown.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_(character)It is the title character in Stephen King's 1986 horror novel It. The character is an ancient cosmic evil which preys upon the children of Derry, Maine, roughly every 27 years, using a variety of powers that include the ability to shapeshift, manipulate reality, and go unnoticed by adults. During the course of the story, It primarily appears in the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown.
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Post by neil on Aug 10, 2020 6:20:11 GMT -5
24.30Voight-Kampff Machine preliminary sketch by industrial designer SYD MEAD for the film BLADE RUNNER Sydney Jay Mead (July 18, 1933 – December 30, 2019) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syd_Mead
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Post by neil on Aug 10, 2020 8:03:29 GMT -5
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Post by neil on Aug 10, 2020 8:43:44 GMT -5
26.30futurism.com/worlds-first-ai-universe-simulatorThis article highlights an aspect of AI and its building block deep learning which is certainly clear to those working in the field - machines, defined as some combination of mechanical and digital technology, often work outside the bounds of hard science because experiments(a word I often note by its lack in the literature) are enabled through working theory. This explains the intriguing preponderance of results which cannot be explained by said working theories. All of this is essential structural science which is as it should be. The further one gets from the coal face(the actual experiments) into facsimiles intended for mass consumption, the more things that those driving the experiments understand as experimental and theoretical are taken for granted and therefore omitted from the narrative. This in itself is part of the nature of narratives. If an article is describing a house, it does not also include all information pertinent to the production of lumber. A vulnerability of narrative is the difficulty of establishing context without belaboring the plot. A great example is the golly-gee-whiz articles which filled 50s publications like POPULAR SCIENCE about how life will be in the future. Most of them were wrong. Granted, POPULAR SCIENCE is a not top shelf peer-reviewed journal, but you get the drift.
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Post by neil on Aug 10, 2020 14:36:48 GMT -5
27.30
You are what you leave behind.
His grandfather had once said, visiting him in prison ...
CITY AT THE END OF TIME
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Post by neil on Aug 11, 2020 8:33:24 GMT -5
28.30
If we consider The Invisible Man, it does not seem that he has done much to improve his lot other than to acquire such a body that does not reflect light. The Invisible Man is still manifest to the other four senses, and remains a living presence in cognition and memory. The great trick would be the ability to draw in all awareness of one's self such that one is neither remembered, missed, nor made evident by the absence of any association with the ongoing world.
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Post by neil on Aug 11, 2020 9:17:03 GMT -5
29.30 The City at the End of Time GREG BEAR
CHAPTER 54
The Green Warehouse
The book group ladies retired to a far corner with a few cots and blankets and pillows that Bidewell pulled from an old brass-bound wooden chest. Their lanterns cast long, dancing shadows on the warehouse’s walls and ceiling.
Before he retired to his own quarters, Bidewell pulled down a volume from an otherwise bare shelf. The volume bore on the base of its spine the number—or the year—1298. In view of Jack and Ginny, he winked, put the book under his arm, and bade them good night.
Then he slid shut the steel door.
The warehouse became still.
Ginny gave Jack an uneasy glance and retreated into her space.
The ladies and Ginny had helped Jack clear another space a few yards away and provided him with another cot and blankets. Everyone in their little squares, insulated, protected. Waiting.
He sat on the edge of his cot and let his shoulders slump with exhaustion.
Ginny’s cot creaked on the opposite side of the stack of boxes and crates. They seemed far enough from the others—if they spoke softly, no one else would hear. “Is it time for stories?” she whispered.
“Sure,” he said. “You first.”
She walked around the crates, pulling along a chair, and sat, knees together, booted feet askew.
“I’m eighteen,” she said. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“People say I’m lucky, but bad things keep happening.”
“Maybe they’d be worse if you weren’t lucky.”
“I answered the ad, just like you. I called the phone number.”
“Jesus,” Jack said.
“Some of it’s hard to remember,” she began. “I came from Minneapolis. I was living in a house full of musicians, musical types—they all played instruments, deejayed raves. We chipped in and did odd jobs. They said I brought them luck because we kept getting better gigs, play dates, black sick jams.”
“That’s good?” Jack asked.
She nodded. “I loved it. We were free and we ate total shack and I felt…” She glanced at Jack.
“You’ve lost me,” he said. “But keep going. I’ll catch up.”
“One day…I knew my friends were forgetting about me. I thought it was the drugs.” Her voice and face hardened. “We would hang out in old houses, talk about music, movies and TV, stuff that
passed the time. Every week or so they acted just like I was new. They didn’t remember anything about me. Sometimes it hurt so much I would go off by myself, but I didn’t like being alone. I asked, what would happen if I stopped remembering who I was? I did a lot of drawing.”
Jack winced, her voice had become so flinty.
“They were snuffing up X—Ecstasy. I tried it a few times—they all thought if you didn’t do X, you were a hard case, unable to form true friendships. It made me so happy and loving. I would give anybody everything I had, all the loving little twinkles in my little brain just lining up like pinball hits. Anybody could walk in and I’d feel that love-juice flooding me, I was so grateful…I couldn’t hand out my goodies fast enough. And it didn’t matter. They still forgot me.”
“Wow,” Jack said.
Ginny watched his expression warily. “Yeah. All the time I was with them, I didn’t jump the lines—I didn’t fate-shift. I thought that was over. I thought I had a home. But I was still having the dreams. I’d draw—that was fine, everybody liked weird art. Everything creepy, everything about death, is fine, dying is the ultimate giving. Eternal giggles. And then, everyone would forget. They’d think I was new. They’d tell me their stories all over again.”
Jack sat quiet, letting her get it out.
“I would have died,” she murmured. “But then this…person came to me, the one who did most of the really strange drawings—when I was gone, blanking out. She’s part of my dreams, too—I think. One day she left a note. It was in little block letters—like it was written by a child: ‘Put your skin back on. Get out. We have work to do.’ And I knew just what she meant. This wasn’t love or even friendship, what we were doing in that house, it was turning oneself into a snail between a boot and a sidewalk. I had no defenses left, just raw nerves. So I quit the house and I quit the X and all my friends, and after a few days I was sitting under a bridge, out of the snow, when I read an ad from a newspaper I was using to stay warm.” She drew quotes. “‘Do you dream of a city at the end of time?’ And a phone number.”
Jack winced again.
“I still had some charge on my cell, so I called the number, mostly just to have something to do. Another bad decision, right?”
Jack lifted one corner of his lips.
“That’s what I do. I run away from good decisions, toward bad decisions. This was the worst, I think. A man came to the bridge and picked me up. He looked young, Asian—in his thirties, tall and skinny but fit, with deep black eyes. He drove an old gray Mercedes. There was someone in the backseat—a woman. She wore a veil and never said a word. She smelled like smoke. We left the city behind. Off the highway, the man and I got out and had lunch at a diner, but the woman never left the backseat. She wasn’t dead—I could hear her breathing.
“After we ate, back on the highway, she started a fire. The guy had a fire extinguisher under his seat. He pulled over and opened her door and yelled and sprayed foam all over. She whimpered but never said a word.”
Jack’s fingers knotted in his lap.
“I thought he looked young, but his tiny black eyes were old. Mostly, he was friendly. The front seat was so comfortable—heated, soft but firm. He did tricks with his silver dollar—one-handed, the other hand on the wheel, pretty clever. The coin did everything he wanted it to—like it was alive and he was its master.
“He remembered my story—what I told him as we drove. We might go on forever, tricks and stories and the long, straight road. I was so out of it, so accepting—still just a little fool, I guess.
“We finally came to a big house out in the woods near St. Paul. There were piles of lumber and stuff all around, but I didn’t see any workmen. The guy told me they had found an old vault under the house with thick walls where things could get really quiet. They put me down in the vault and I slept for a couple of days. It was quiet. I got better, stopped gritting my teeth and biting the insides of my cheeks. I felt so lucky, and thought maybe I was learning how to feel gratitude, real love. He would visit every day, bring me food and clothes, and I knew from the beginning he wasn’t interested in sex—he respected me. I thought this was a good place. He was good to me. My dreams stopped.”
Ginny had started shaking, little tremors at first, but now her teeth were chattering. Jack reached out to touch her arm, but she pulled it away.
“The last time he visited, he told me we were going to take a walk. We climbed the stairs out of the basement, and the wind was whistling outside. It was cold—below freezing. The air smelled like snow. I noticed that they hadn’t put in carpet or wood floors—just plywood. It was really just an old abandoned house that had never been finished. He said we were going to meet the Queen.”
Jack pulled his hands apart so he wouldn’t bruise his fingers.
“He said the Queen paid him to find special people. Somehow, I saw that the guy’s clothes were actually pretty shabby. She couldn’t be paying him much. And now his skin looked old. I thought maybe I’d found myself a real vampire—a poor one.” Ginny’s voice dropped below a whisper. Jack could barely hear her.
The warehouse creaked. Yards off, a cat meowed. The meow echoed around the rafters as if there were dozens of cats.
“He was as afraid of the woods as I was. I knew the Queen wasn’t the woman who started fires, because we passed the car when we walked into the trees—just parked there, on the dirt driveway. Smoke was drifting out of an open rear window. The woman was inside. I saw her veil move. She was looking right at me but I couldn’t see her eyes.”
“You didn’t run?”
“I couldn’t. I couldn’t even think about jumping the lines because I knew the woman in the car would set fires everywhere, and she wouldn’t even need to leave the backseat. I could almost see her doing it—hundreds of little blazes dropping from the air. She’d burn the woods, the house, any path I tried to take, anywhere I tried to go.”
“Using fires—like wasps.”
Ginny glanced left for a second, chin down, defiant, working hard to get it all out. “I wonder how many of them are out there, hunting us?”
Jack cocked his head. “No idea.”
“We walked between the trees for five or ten minutes. I thought we were walking in a big circle—we kept passing a black lake covered with green duckweed. Everything was getting dark. There was a storm coming in, low black clouds—lightning.”
“Sideways lightning?”
Ginny nodded. “Then he said something about a moth. Maybe it was the Moth. ‘The Moth is coming to introduce you.’ The trees—I noticed that their branches grew down into the dirt. The leaves moved, independently. But they weren’t really moving, they were just changing—getting bigger or smaller, shifting left or right, but without moving—because the trees were black and solid, like stiff tar. I thought, maybe each time a tree seemed to move, it was becoming a different tree—I don’t know how to describe what was wrong with them. The guy with the coin seemed as scared as I was. He said, ‘The Queen in White expects perfection. That’s part of her charm.’ I asked him how old he was, how old the Queen was, and he said, ‘What an odd question.’
“I think I saw another man—but it wasn’t a man. It stretched up and out until I could see right through it—right through him. We came to the center of the woods. I knew it was the center, but we had never left the circle. Maybe the path was a kind of spiral, but special—curving inward, but not in space. There was like a big lake of frozen jade-green water—all carved up, gouged out. I couldn’t see the sky over the lake—it just wasn’t there.”
Jack didn’t want to hear any more. He shifted a few inches to his right, as if she were a package about to explode.
“The clouds dropped and cut off the trees. Leaves fell like little flat rocks, ice cold. They stung when they hit my head and my arms. The light became gray and icy. The shadows had edges sharp as knives—if you walked over one, it could cut you. Everything smelled like lemons and burning gravy and gasoline—I hope I never smell anything like that again.
“‘Don’t say a word,’ the thin man told me. He pocketed his coin, held out his hand, wiggled his long fingers. I couldn’t help it—I showed him the stone, still in its box. He reached out as if to take it, but instead he backed away and said, ‘Don’t move. Don’t look. I’m sorry.’
“He started running. He left the circle we were on, and I heard him crashing through branches. I guessed that the circle was a trap—I had been hypnotized by the spiral. I couldn’t lift my feet.”
Jack covered his mouth.
“The same clouds…in the sky…like the ones that flew in over the city to get you,” Ginny said. “The man wanted to deliver me to something that didn’t belong here, something angry, sad. Disappointed. I stood between the trees. The leaves were spinning around the Queen or whatever it was in the center…I couldn’t see her. But she was tying up everything into one big knot. Her knot was the center of the spiral. I didn’t believe it, but I understood it—everything that could happen was going to happen, and all of it would happen to me, and some of it would even be stuff that couldn’t happen.
“I was about to see everything, all at once. I turned around—completely around—and the trees spun by, but only halfway, and I saw the man in the trees—he lowered his hands and his eyes were like snowballs in his head. I turned around again, completely around, knowing that I would not see the Queen again until I had spun twice. Does that make sense?”
Jack closed his eyes and realized he could see the sense that it did make. “In that place, you have to turn twice to rotate a full circle,” he said.
“I thought you’d understand.”
“It’s got a different logic, like the jumps we make. Did you see her?” Jack asked.
“I don’t call it seeing. But yes, I suppose I did. She was at the center of the jade lake. She wasn’t dressed in white, she didn’t wear anything. At first I didn’t know why the man called her the Queen in White. Maybe he saw her differently, or knew something else about her. She was very tall. If I came from somewhere else, saw with different eyes, I suppose she might have been beautiful. She had limbs or arms or things coming out of her that I didn’t recognize, but they looked right—they fit. Even so, I knew that if I came near her, she would suck my eyes right out of my head. I felt like a piece of bloody ice. She just stood at the center of her knot, watching, infinitely curious, curious like a hunger, curious like fear—she wanted to know everything about me. And so angry, so disappointed. I wanted to tell her what she needed to know, just to end her disappointment, her rage—but I couldn’t explain it in words. Instead, what I had to give her would shoot up out of my skin, all the places I had been and things I had done or would do—past and future, all my selves, just a big, chewed-up mess flowing into her knot. She’d end up wearing me like a dress or a scarf. I didn’t think I was going to die—but I knew that what was about to happen would be worse than dying.”
Jack sat stiff on the cot, hands trembling under his thighs. “Umhmm,” he murmured.
She smiled. “But I’m here, right? So relax.”
“That’s not easy,” he said with a nervous grin.
“Well, deal. I had been holding something back - didn’t even know it, lucky for me, because I might have told her. Maybe you know what I’m talking about.”
“Maybe.”
“Tell me what I did.” Ginny looked straight at him.
Jack made a circular scissors motion with his fingers.
“Yeah. When I was finished—and it took just an instant—I was flat on my face, covered with leaves. Trees had fallen all around and water was everywhere—steaming but cold. Duckweed hung on all the trees. The lake had flung itself up out of the hollow, and I didn’t see the man again—I don’t know where he went. The whole forest was flattened.”
“What about your stone?”
“I dropped it, but then I found it,” Ginny said, nodding. “It was right near the path, still in its box. I picked it up and walked back between the trees. Near the house, I saw that the car was gone. I was alone. You must have done the same thing, Jack. So tell me what I did that made them go away.”
He still couldn’t answer.
“Can we slice world-lines?” she asked. “Not just jump between them, but cut them into pieces, kill them?”
He shook his head. “It’s something to do with the stones summing up. They’re part of us. We can’t lose them unless we die.”
“I knew that when I pawned the box. It always comes back to me. Did you cut things loose? In the storm.”
“I don’t remember. I don’t think I had time.”
“Hold my hand,” Ginny said, and held it out.
He didn’t hesitate. Her fingers were hot and her skin seemed to glow a faint cherry-red like the iron stove in the next room. “You’re burning up,” Jack said, but did not let go.
“Sometimes I do that. It’ll pass,” Ginny said. “I survived, didn’t I?”
“You sure did.”
“I know why they want to catch us,” she said. “Whoever they are.”
“Whatever they are,” Jack added.
“They’re afraid of us.”
He squeezed her fingers and the heat subsided. “Makes you wonder about Bidewell. What are we getting ourselves into?”
“Bidewell’s not afraid, not of us,” Ginny said. “That’s why I came here. No knots, no fear—just quiet and lots of books. The books are like insulation. I still feel safe here. My stone is safe, too—for now.”
Jack let out a low whistle. “Okay,” he said.
“You’re not convinced.”
“It’s quiet—that’s okay. But I’d like for everything just to get back to normal.”
“Was it ever normal—for you?” Ginny asked.
“Before my mother died,” he said. “Well, maybe not normal—but fun. Nice.”
“You loved her?”
“Of course. Together, she and my father were…wherever we ended up, we had a home, even if it was just for a day.”
Ginny looked around the warehouse. “This feels more like home than anyplace I’ve ever been. What about you? What’s your story?”
“My mother was a dancer. My father wanted to be a comedian and a magician. My mother died, then my father. I wasn’t much more than a kid. They didn’t leave me much—just a trunk, some tricks and some books on magic—and the stone. I didn’t starve—I had learned how to play guitar and juggle, do card tricks, that sort of thing. I fell in with a tough crowd for a while, like you, got out of it…learned the streets, started busking. Managed not to get killed. Two years ago I moved in with a guy named Burke. He works as a sous chef in a restaurant. We don’t see much of each other.”
“Lovers?” Ginny asked.
Jack smiled. “No,” he said. “Burke’s as straight as they come. He just doesn’t like living alone.”
“You’ve met those women before?”
“I know Ellen pretty well,” Jack said. “I met the others a few days ago.”
“Did you do those sketches that Miriam found…in your apartment?”
“I’m a lousy artist. The other one did them. My guest.”
“Where’s he from, do you think?”
“‘The city at the end of time,’ of course,” Jack said, trying for sarcasm, but his voice cracked.
“Mine, too,” Ginny said. “But the last time I dreamed about her, she’s not there. She’s outside, lost somewhere awful.”
“The Chaos,” Jack said.
She looked down at the floor. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“All right,” he said.
“Jack, do they have stones like ours?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Maybe we’re supposed to bring them.”
“I don’t see how. They’re there—we’re here.” He pushed back, then looked down at a large cardboard box labeled VALDOLID, 1898. “What kind of books does Bidewell collect?”
“All sorts,” Ginny said.
Jack pulled up the interleaved flaps and lifted out a dusty volume. The book’s hinges had cracked and the leather left powder on his fingers. The gold-embossed words on the spine still did not mean anything. He looked up. “Gobbledygook Press,” he said. “I guess the stones aren’t finished.”
“A lot of his books were like that before. Bidewell seems to know the difference.”
“Makes as much sense as everything else.” Jack was about to put the book down, but something tugged in his arm—the faintest pull on a hidden nerve—and he turned to a middle page. There, surrounded by more nonsense, a paragraph poked up that he could (just barely) read:
..............Then Jerem enterd the House and therei found a book all meaningless bu for these words: ..............Hast thou the old rock, Jeremy? In your pocket, wihyou?
Ginny watched him closely as his face flushed, as if he had been prancing around naked. Tongue poking the inside of his cheek, Jack slowly flipped through more of the book. Nothing else made sense.
“What is it?” she asked.
He showed her the page. She read the lines and her jaw fell like a child seeing a ghost. “All the books are different,” she said. “I’m not in any of them.”
“Have you looked?” Jack asked.
She shook her head. “There wasn’t time.”
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Post by neil on Aug 11, 2020 10:55:46 GMT -5
30.30
ac·tin·ic /akˈtinik/
adjective technical adjective: actinic
relating to or denoting light able to cause photochemical reactions, as in photography, through having a significant short wavelength or ultraviolet component.
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