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She lost her school job after refusing to sign a pro-Israel pledge. Now, she’s filing a lawsuit. (archive)

Bahia Amawi, a speech pathologist who has worked as a contractor in a Texas school district for nine years, received a new contract agreement to sign in September for the upcoming school year. The agreement asked her to affirm that she did not boycott Israel and assert that she would not while working for the school. She declined to sign it. Amawi, an American citizen of Palestinian descent who was born in Austria, said the statements infringed on her principles: her stance on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and her belief in the First Amendment. So she was forced to stop working with the district.

The contract, which stems from a 2017 law passed by the state’s Republican-held legislature and governor that prohibited state agencies from contracting with companies boycotting Israel, is the subject of a lawsuit filed this week by Amawi in federal district court in Austin.

Amawi says the state’s enforcement of the law violates her right to free speech. “My first reaction was shock,” Amawi told reporters Monday. “Why is the government restricting me from boycotting a certain entity?”

Amawi started working for the Pflugerville Independent School District outside Austin in 2009. Her work entails doing evaluations of Arabic-speaking children, according to the complaint she filed. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the school district are named in the lawsuit. [...] Glenn Greenwald, a columnist and co-founding editor of the Intercept who writes frequently about Israeli politics as they intersect with those of the United States, wrote harshly of the contract. “The language of the affirmation Amawi was told she must sign reads like Orwellian — or McCarthyite — self-parody, the classic political loyalty oath that every American should instinctively shudder upon reading,” he wrote. “In order to continue to work, Amawi would be perfectly free to engage in any political activism against her own country, participate in an economic boycott of any state or city within the U.S., or work against the policies of any other government in the world — except Israel.”

Also at The Hill and The Daily Beast.

Meanwhile, Congresstards are trying to add Israel anti-boycott legislation into a spending bill that prevents a government shutdown:

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is scrambling at the eleventh hour to include controversial language in a year-end spending bill prohibiting U.S. companies from joining boycotts of Israel launched by the United Nations or similar groups.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and other members are pressing congressional leaders to attach his Israel anti-boycott legislation to a sweeping omnibus spending package — a move that could complicate efforts to prevent a government shutdown.

“There is bipartisan interest in this issue, but everything is still being negotiated and nothing has been decided,” said one senior House Republican aide.

[...] “This bill sets a precedent for penalizing First Amendment actions because they’re unpopular or because the government doesn’t agree with them,” said Manar Waheed, senior legislative and advocacy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “This is a step on a road to the erosion of First Amendment rights in a way that will impact movements and viewpoints for the future.”

See also: How Democrats are helping the right stifle debate on Israel

So, you all know I post my relationship stuff here. I this space as a place to collect my thoughts and share things that I normally can't share in my day to day life. Ready? Here we go.

My sister texts me Friday night. She's pretty upset about something and wants to meet with me and my brother ASAP. We arrange to meet for breakfast the following morning. I have no idea what she wants to meet about, but I'm assuming it's something about my Mom (who I think has started drinking again occasionally...). She made a slightly odd request about meeting somewhere other than her house, so I was kinda suspicious that maybe something is up with her relationship... But probably it's just something about Mom.

So we meet up, we start eating breakfast and she tells us that she's been having an affair for the last 6 months and her husband caught her with the guy the previous day. She's apparently been dating her boss (the CEO). This guy is fucking 60 years old! (She's 30) Oh, and they are in love.

Meanwhile... this guy is also married and has 5 kids (some that are the same age as my sister). My sister has a 9 month old infant, meaning this whole thing started when the baby was ~3 months old. Apparently this guy was going to tell his wife about the affair yesterday, but I have my doubts. I am skeptical that he'll give up 1/2 of everything -- including his company I'm assuming -- to his wife. We'll see I guess.

So my sisters marriage is over. She can't go back to her job that she loved. She's basically a single mom now. Stupid fucking choices.

My sister's (future ex) husband has been working really hard lately. He had a full time job, while simultaneously working toward an MBA, while also having a newborn. That's a full workload. My sister said that she felt that he wasn't spending enough time with her and felt lonely, so she went to find affection elsewhere. I get that, but there is a right way and a wrong way.

I'm pretty pissed off for a couple reasons. 1) This guy is twice her age. 2)Her husband got royally fucked over. 3) Her baby will never know her parents together and will have to perform the 'divorced parent shuffle' for the rest of her life.

Are you having problems in your relationship? TALK TO THE PERSON YOU LOVE! Tell them how you feel. Feel lonely? TELL THEM. Want more touch? TELL THEM! A relationship runs on trust, and that includes telling your partner when you are unhappy about something. How can your partner make you happy if they don't know what you need?

While there are other reasons that I've been gravitating towards what I'm about to say, it was having seen not "Lady Gaga" but Stefani Germanotta as well as Bradley Cooper in their remake of "A Star Is Born" that actually precipitated my long-delayed decision

: A couple years back I quite sadly read Steven Pressfield's "Turning Pro". "Sadly" because while I was greatly inspired by his "The War Of Art", I had not read far before I knew full well that not only was I not a Pro, I was unlikely ever to become one as well.

That all changed right around 7:15 this last evening - Sunday, December 16th, 2018:

I Turned Pro.

That is not a decision to be made lightly, but I will explain later just why it is not, as well as what it actually means not so much to be a Pro, but to become one.

I will say that before the sun sets on another day, I will have posted my first vocal demo track at the above site. I'm having trouble getting my "Dry" raw recordings mixed right so as to sound good when they're "Wet", that is, when they've had such effects as Reverb mixed into them.

I've been working on a full-length vocal CD for a while now. Quite likely I won't need to mix my Dry tracks at all were I to add a third mic placed about fifteen feet away so as to capture the room ambience.

Just now I emailed my piano EP's producer Pete Burnight to ask his recommendation for a battery-powered Electret Mic.

He lent me two such mics for my EP's recordings onto his portable four-track with TDK SA-X cassette tapes run at double speed - so as to diminish the Tape Hiss - then mixed them for me onto a DAT cassette.

More commonly known as "Condenser Mics", they require "Phantom Power" not so much as to power them rather to charge the two metal-coated membranes whose change in capacitance results in subtle AC current fluctuations. "Phantom" because very, very little actual current flows.

I want a battery-powered mic - Pete's were battery powered - because I regard amp-supplied power over the XLR cable to be Wrong In The Eyes Of The Lord.

That first demo track I'll record with my iPhone 7 and the mostly-excellent Pro Microphone iOS. "Mostly": I'll post a review on my above site Real Soon Now.

Steven Pressfield Dot Com while quick to answer pings leads my browser to spin for tens of minutes just now. I'll post links to both "Turning Pro" and "The War Of Art" after Pressfield's webmaster gives his box a Boot To The Head.

Thursday I posted a journal entry asking for serious discussion of an issue rather than trolling or shit flinging. I got about what I expected. One solitary AC willing to seriously discuss the issue and every other participant either unwilling or uninterested in engaging in such.

That's fucking sad, folks.

World's First 'Performance Enhancing Gaming Glove' Funded on Kickstarter

As gaming becomes increasingly mainstream through the younger generations, entirely new lines of accessories are being designed and produced for this ever-growing audience.

The latest one is the Flashe Gaming Glove, which according to the makers will enhance your gaming performance on PC. It will also reduce your potential for injuries and increase your comfort while generally using a mouse. Oskar "Dodde" Ödmark came with the original concept, after suffering a shoulder injury in 2014. Being a mechanical engineer, he eventually came up with a solution that has been patented in Sweden earlier this year.

The Flashe gaming glove is now on a Kickstarter campaign for crowdfunding. With thirteen days to go, it already got over four times the minimum goal. The estimated delivery for backers is February 2019.

I say: remove the arms. Then you won't feel arm discomfort during gameplay.

Don't worry The Thought Police aren't after me again.

I wrote a short essay about the most frightening experience of my entire life.

While I posted it, and while it will show up in web search as I added it's URL to my Sitemaps Protocol map, it's going to be a good long time before I tell anyone but a deeply trusted few, and even them not for a while from now. I won't email it to anyone rather I will send it snail mail.

I will leave you with this hint though.

The first time I made a Schizophrenic stop hallucinating just by talking to him was in the plain sight of two Psychiatric Nurse in a PICU. One of them wandered nonchalantly out from behind the nurses desk about ten minutes later:

      Did you see what I did there,
      I asked quietly.

      Yes, just as quietly.

        I don't know why it worked.

        You entered his reality. If you can figure out the rules
        that apply there, you can bring him some relief.

A deeply faithful old man was being tormented by the Devil. Bernard just asked me to say a blessing over him.

In reality I can't make anyone stop hallucinating. While every Schizophrenic can make himself stop hallucinating, the don't know they can until I point that fact out to them.

Just writing this is really freaking me out. I'm going to go somewhere far away from my office, and I will leave my phone in my file cabinet.

Uuuuugh. Just a small mini-rant today. I got bounced from a social circle online elsewhere earlier today because, *apparently,* having a genital preference is transmisogyny. It's not enough that I support transwomen through their struggles and transition and suffering; no, the fact that I am a strict vagitarian and flatly refuse to date or have sex with a transwoman who still has male equipment makes me A Bad Person (TM).

This is how you get TERFs. I wish these people understood how much it reeks of male privilege--yes, MALE privilege, even though they were always women mentally and are on their way physically--to demand that a gay but cisgender women open herself, in the most literal, intimate, and deep sense, to the body parts she is not attracted to because the mind matches.

Look, I'm not going to date Buck Angel or another FtM who still has a vagina either: I'm a lesbian. I like women. I don't demand they be "womyn-born-womyn," but boy bits are verboten. What is unreasonable about this?! Isn't the entire point of someone going MtF to get a woman's exterior to match her interior?

I'm never going to become a TERF, but stuff like this is almost guaranteed to create more of them. I am having less and less sympathy for transwomen the older I get, and that worries me, because we're still all humans at the end of the day. I just wish some of them would pull their heads out of their asses about this.

America's perfect blonde überwaifu for the Trump Age:

Miss USA accused of mocking Asian contestants' English: 'Miss Universe should not be an ambassador of bullying'

In a now-expired Instagram Live video, Miss USA Sarah Rose Summers can be heard joking to Miss Australia and Miss Colombia about how Miss Vietnam speaks.

“What do you think about Miss Vietnam?” she asks her friends, before laughing, “… and she pretends to know so much English, and you ask her a question after having a whole conversation with her and she … [smiles and nods].”

Popular Instagram page Diet Prada posted the footage with another two videos of Miss USA, this time speaking about Miss Cambodia.

In the first she showers her fellow contestant with praise while thanking her own Cambodian fans for their support.

But in the second, she’s seen pitying Miss Cambodia to the same two friends.

“Miss Cambodia is here and doesn’t speak any English, and not a single other person speaks her language,” she says, adding, “Poor Cambodia.”

Y u no speak American tho?

Also at People.com.

_Speculate_ now.

Surely my many Soylentil friends will agree I am _exceedingly_ Hypergraphic.

My own interpretation of my Methylmalonic Acid blood test is that it was inconclusive: I was right in the middle of the normal range, but its Wikipedia article points out that it can have false negatives as well as false positives.

There are six or eight other B12 Deficiency tests, the most definitive one generally performed last as Bone Marrow Biopsies are both painful and costly.

TLE Hypergraphia along with a few other traits are collectively regarded as Geschwind Syndrome. In my case I also experience Hyperreligiosity, as I will discuss in another post in a day or two, as well as Circumstantiality, a tendency to talk incessantly, wandering from topic to topic with no apparent connection between them.

I'm heavily into talking just that same way.

While Broca's Aphasia originates in the similarly-named Brain Area, the Broca's Area is immediately forward of the Temporal Lobe of one's dominant brain hemisphere, either the right for most artists and musicians or - in my case, as a Scientist, Engineer and Writer - the left one.

However, TLE would _not_ explain my numb feet and lips. I don't know whether or not either B12 or TLE would explain the sudden onset as well as severity of Tinnitus at the start of that same episode, or the severe dizziness that first occurred that afternoon. That dizziness persists, two or three episodes each day, one to three hours each time.

My reading of Wikipedia's Methylmalonic Acid article leads me to figure that my test result of 216 nmol/L is inconclusive. While that level is normal, in the nine weeks before you ordered my blood draw, I'd been eating antacid just like it was M&M candy. This at first due to nausea after my Radical Nephrectomy on 10/31, then later due to the nausea that comes if I move my head even just a little when I get dizzy.

So far today while I was dizzy for three hours. I can avoid nausea without antacids by lying quietly on my bed in the dark listening to music, as that discourages head music. When the dizziness struck this afternoon I was in my therapist's waiting room, so I put my computer back in its bag then sat quietly, staring at a spot on the opposite wall. During my session with her I explained why she'd found me sitting quietly, then for the entire session took care always to look directly at her, never looking away.

So, I'm sitting on my reading chair this morning, getting my daily dose of Uncle John and I come across a story about Tommy Douglas. He's a Canadian feller who arguably was the primary mover behind universal healthcare up there. It's an interesting story but that's not what I feel like talking about today. Today I want to get into one sentence out of the article:

Douglas came to believe that medical care was a basic human right and should be available to everyone.

That sentence annoys me. I dislike inaccurate or imprecise speech on important topics and that most certainly qualifies as such, so let's clarify first.

A right is something you refuse to surrender the ability to do (generally to be able to live around other people without too much strife). They have no need of justification. They need only your refusal to surrender them for whatever reason. Drawing a line in the sand on an unpopular one may get you disinvited from the Christmas party or thrown in prison but that is another matter entirely. Rights aren't very special.

A constitutional right is a right of yours that your nation has decided as a whole that the government shall not interfere with. Constitutional rights are a just an explicitly protected subset of rights in general. We in the US find that the ability to speak your mind is a good one to protect while the ability to shoot someone in the face without a good reason is not, for example. Protected rights are special.

An entitlement is something that you do not innately possess the ability to do, it must be given to you. Entitlements do require justification because they by definition are not something you have a right to. Generally they infringe upon the rights of others, though there are a small minority of situations where this is not the case. For this reason, societies must (hopefully carefully) debate among themselves what entitlements they want to create.

A Human Right is a bullshit term as it includes examples of all of the above and gets redefined all the fucking time.

There, important terms clearly defined.

Now that that's out of the way, it's extremely clear that free as-in-speech access to already existing medical care is most certainly a right but free as-in-beer access to medical care is an entitlement.

So, lets have a real discussion as to why my paying for someone I've never met's healthcare should be an entitlement. Without muddying the waters with imprecise, outright wrong, or just plain bullshit terminology.

Free as-in-beer healthcare infringes upon the rights of medical practitioners to charge what they feel is fair for their services. It also infringes upon the rights of everyone who is forced (which literally means threatened with the use of force in this context) to pay for services they neither requested nor received the benefits of. What justifications do you offer for the infringement of your fellow citizens' rights in such a manner?

I'm open to rational arguments here but bullshit rhetoric and tugs at my heartstrings are getting routed straight to /dev/null.