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So I was drinking beer and eating curry. Where did it all go wrong? Life's great mysteries!

An Alabama man arrested after police found multiple guns and incendiary devices in his pickup truck near the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection has pleaded guilty to weapons charges.

Alabama man arrested near US Capitol for guns, Molotov cocktails pleads guilty

But I'm sure there will still be folks claiming there were no weapons at the insurrection.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous

Suppose you were a right-wing populist government and wanted to maximise your chances of retaining power, what could you do? You could go about "reforming" the checks and balances your society provides. You could alter the judicial system. You could enact new laws, perhaps to effectively criminalise peaceful protest and other forms of democratic dissent. Of course, it helps to have most of the media on your side, and to demonise traditionally critical media and investigative journalism. You could plant your stooges in various media and regulatory organisations.

A few weeks ago, Jonathan Freedland wrote an article in the Guardian: In plain sight, Boris Johnson is rigging the system to stay in power.

From the article:

If this wasn’t us, how would we describe it? If this was Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, or Poland, what language might we use? Would an announcer on the BBC World Service declare: “Amid fuel and food shortages, the government has moved to cement its grip on power. It’s taking action against the courts, shrinking their ability to hold the ruling party to account, curbing citizens’ right to protest and imposing new rules that would gag whistleblowers and sharply restrict freedom of the press. It’s also moving against election monitors while changing voting rules, which observers say will hurt beleaguered opposition groups … ”

It's a good read.

For me, it's further confirmation that the UK, and England in particular, is in serious trouble. Scottish independence can't come soon enough.

Democracy is about much more than just voting.

[AC:] It is simple. Everyone gets a clean environment (free from lead, etc.) with safe clean drinking water.

The standards for what counts as safe have already been established. Here are water regulations for the US. Similar standards exist for other known toxins. Our issue is that you only get a safe clean environment if you can afford it. And, even then, the multi-million dollar houses in West LA turned out to be sitting on toxic waste that seeped over from the 'other' side of town / the toxic dumping predated turning formerly industrial areas into residential areas.

In other words, we want X so make a right to have X. Doesn't sound like the poster even cares how to do it or whether it'll even work because of course, it'll just work out of the box like all our other rights do. [Edit: cooler prose]

While I discussed that a bunch there, here's a summary of why I think just creating a right to something won't work.

In turgid's journal, we have an even sillier example:

[AC:] We have scarcity because right wingers like you desperately want the scarcity to exist. Your only objective is to exploit the working class as much as possible. To use the OP's analogy, you right wingers are the Ferengi.

Just like the Ferengi, you're not interested in scientific and technological progress that would raise the quality of life, reduce scarcity, and improve environmental conditions. Instead, you defend rent-seeking parasites who actively oppose scientific and technological advancements. A fine example is the fossil fuel industry, which should become obsolete as new technology develops and matures. Instead of allowing scientific progress to proceed, the fossil fuel industry engages in misinformation to protect a dying business model and oppose newer and better technologies.

We need less right wing rent-seeking parasites. We need to move past the lie that people are poor because they haven't worked hard enough, when the wealthiest members of our society tend to either inherit their wealth or build it through the exploitation of others. Left to your own devices, right wing psychopaths like you will cut corners with things like safety in factories, all the while demanding workers put in more labor for less pay. You right wingers are sick individuals, happy to let others languish in scarcity and work in dangerous conditions, all so you can line your pockets with more money.

There's a reason that Starfleet officers are warned about the Ferengi when they're at the Academy.

If only we could do something about the rightwingers, then we'd have post-scarcity right now.

What's missed in that verbiage is that you don't live in a society capable of either delivering a nebulous right to "access" to something nor supporting a post-scarcity economy. The cart is before the horse.

It's not rich people or failwingers holding you back. It's reality. That's why you didn't get your lollipop.

I think it's time to dispute such magic thinking. Our world didn't come easily. Just since civilization started, there have been hundreds of generations toiling - making our world what it is. But now, it's supposed to be simple. Just deliver the lollipops.

Well, just like those hundreds of other generations, you'll have to work for it. Maybe someday we'll never have to work to make our world a better place, but that hasn't happened yet.

I read an interesting article called Making a Living (The history of what we call work) which is a discussion of a book called Work: A Deep History. From the Stone Age to the Age of Robots, by South African anthropologist James Suzman.

It was particularly interesting because it delves into Keynesian economics and discusses the transition of human societies from hunter-gatherers to agrarian and then industrial, finally dealing with current day issues of automation, the growing disparity between well-paid and poorly-paid jobs, wealth inequality, environmental issues and the need for perpetual economic growth.

TL;DR: We have been conditioned to confuse wants and needs, keeping up with the Joneses is the source of many of our problems, and we'd do well to work a bit less and party a bit more.

They say that no one ever says they wished they worked more/harder on their death bed. I'm not so sure. I can see myself on mine wishing I'd achieved more. I don't necessarily mean the acquisition of material possessions, and I don't mean ticking off a bucket list, I just mean doing cool new stuff, learning, discovering and so on.

Don't get me wrong, I do value many material possessions. I value being warm and dry with somewhere safe to sleep, to have plenty of food and to have my medical needs met. I value having cool stuff to do things with. I'm sitting in a room just now with 10 computers of my own (11 if you count my old ZX-81). We have two good cars, which are very useful and a pleasure to drive. I wish I had a bigger brain so I could do more cool stuff...

What I got from that article was that there are a lot of people in the world who need to work to be fulfilled. That doesn't mean working themselves into poor health or an early grave and it doesn't mean working in order to acquire enormous amounts of material wealth but to achieve things, to do meaningful things, to discover new things, to heal the sick and so on.

We need Star Trek now more than ever. We need to redirect more of this effort and more of these resources to science and exploration. We'll all benefit, including materially, but most of all we'll become more fulfilled. Let's not suffocate ourselves on this rock in the pursuit of social status.

By the way, I spent the last two weekends planting trees, scattering seeds and planting saplings. I planted over 100 saplings (lodge pole pine, silver birch, sitka spruce). I've scattered thousands of seeds (rowan, juniper, larch). I have some oak and chestnut saplings from last autumn's seeds that need to be transplanted soon too. They'll need protectors to stop the deer eating them (again).

Next year, after the site has been cleared, I'm going to buy a few hundred saplings of other species to plant.

On Friday, Sir David Amess, Conservative MP for Southend West was stabbed to death by a suspected Islamist terrorist while carrying out his constituency surgery at Belfriars Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea.

Amess was a Conservative Eurosceptic and passionate about animal rights.

This is a terrible tragedy and devastating for his family and friends, and his constituents have lost their democratically-elected MP who served his local area for many years.

This is a cowardly attack on democracy. For all its faults, he was elected lawfully and peacefully under the UK's democratic system. One of the features of the UK system is that Members of Parliament hold "surgeries" - open meetings in their constituencies - where ordinary people can meet them and raise issues directly.

In 2016 Labour MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed to death in the street by a far-right terrorist where she had been due to hold a constituency surgery.

Prior to that, the last MP to have been murdered in office was Airey Neave who was killed in 1979 by a car bomb planted by Irish terrorists.

In recent years, particularly due to the thread of terrorism, armed police have been on patrol in the UK. Do MPs need an armed guard when they meet their constituents?

(This is part of an occasional series which began with Make Your Own Camera Tripod and Make Your Own Boxes With Rounded Corners.)

Tools: Scissors, needle.

Materials: Broken umbrella, elastic, sewing thread, (optional) glue.

A while back, I invited my friend to a beginner ballet class. I hoped my friend would become a regular and that we could meet often but unfortunately not. My friend was satisfied to attend one class and never repeat it. Unfortunately, this one class remains notable. My friend wore a home-made circle skirt during the class. Furthermore, my friend chose to wear this with the most incongruent velor leggings. It was very anomalous and it obviously made an impression. About 16 months after this class, the dance teacher asked me "How's your friend? Pieris? The one with the skirt?" Oh, jeepers. Said teacher had seen hundreds of new people since Pieris and yet few, if any, had made an equal impression.

Pieris is obsessed with making circle skirts. When Pieris isn't making circle skirts afresh, Pieris is often making retrospective improvements or repairs. Pieris has identical length circle skirts in 15 plain colors and various designs which are striped, checked and patterned. If the material is available, Pieris has a circle skirt in Gingham black, red, yellow, green, blue or purple - in 1/4 inch, 1/2 inch, 3/4 inch, 1 inch, 1+1/2 inch and 2 inch widths. I've made four circle skirts with Pieris and, unsurprisingly, I've received a circle skirt as a Christmas gift from Pieris. I'd be only mildly surprised if Pieris made circle skirts in all official tartan clan patterns. Indeed, Pieris had at least five tartan patterns in a collection of more than 160 designs. It would be fair to say that my friend's primary interest in life is circle skirts and it is possible that my friend has only appeared in public wearing a home-made circle skirt for at least ten years.

My friend, Pieris, now looks beyond pristine fabric for clothes-making. A bonkers example came, at a bus garage, in the rain, when Pieris saw a broken, discarded umbrella in a litter bin - and salvaged it to make a leopard print circle skirt. When you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When you're obsessed with making circle skirts, anything may be the next circle skirt. Unfortunately, this type of insanity is contagious. I mentioned umbrella skirts to friends and they thought it would be funny to make a skirt from a stereotypical red, yellow, green and blue golfing umbrella. It was rather uncanny to find such an umbrella on the way home; especially when the weather wasn't wet or windy. That's how and why I started salvaging discarded umbrellas. After this bizarre incident, I've collected more umbrellas; mostly large black ones. I intend to use them as material for a junk couture beginner sewing class but opportunities to teach have been limited. Given it has now become a trendy activity to recycle unlikely materials into clothes, I'd thought that it would be worthwhile to forward some wisdom.

Firstly, very large umbrellas are preferable unless you are making child size clothing or a very short skirt. A zipper is rarely practical with thin plastic and therefore the skirt is likely to be elasticated. This requires a waistband circumference which fits snugly over hips - or wider to prevent tearing. This is likely to reduce length by 6-8 inches (15-20cm) - or significantly more if the elastication is to be hidden within the material. Actually, elastic is likely to be visible unless you begin with a particularly large umbrella.

Secondly, a dark or highly patterned umbrella is preferable. For example, leopard print. White or pink umbrellas tend to be too revealing - and especially so when wet. Short or bright umbrellas work as an underskirt to add volume but they are not suitable on their own. A bright underskirt may be preferable with dark elastication to avoid unsightly seams. In all cases, 3/4 inch, 1 inch, 2cm or 2.5cm wide elastic is highly preferable.

Thirdly, an umbrella is invariably discarded because the frame is busted. The covering may have light scuffing but is otherwise in good condition. If the pattern is quite busy then minor holes can be repaired with glue. One exception to covering quality - which I have discovered the hard way - is that an umbrella discarded by a fence, wall or tree may be covered in dog urine. If the urine has dried, this may not be immediately apparent. A busted umbrella found on a park bench or in a litter bin is very unlikely to have this problem.

Fourthly, in the season when discarded umbrellas are most plentiful, it may be prudent to carry sharp scissors. This eliminates awkwardly carrying a broken umbrella frame. Removing the material from the frame is a relatively dangerous operation which may be hazardous to eyes. I've found that a relatively safe method is to hold the umbrella handle under one arm while cutting the fabric from the frame with the other arm. Furthermore, cut at the bottom of the umbrella. This keeps your head near to the fulcrum of the umbrella rather than the most dangerous stray ends. The material in middle of the umbrella can be cut very sloppily because a larger hole will be made for the waist.

Fifthly, opinions differ regarding umbrella trimmings. Pieris removes plastic or metal ends which affix the covering to the ends of the umbrella spokes. I prefer to keep them because it weights the skirt and reduces inadvertent blustery moments. Likewise, Pieris removes any strap which is used to keep an umbrella furled. I believe that straps remain convenient for storage. However, it should be noted that I'm vastly less experienced and it should be particularly obvious that I've spent less time considering umbrella skirts in detail. For a beginner, leaving the strap eliminates one source of error and, anyhow, if you're going to wear an umbrella, own it and don't leave any doubt. (Who knew that umbrella skirt manufacture had ideological differences?)

Finally, an umbrella skirt is very suited to wet weather given that it is invariably water-proof and/or quick drying. Plastic material also matches water-proof nylon and vinyl clothing. A particularly suitable combination is red nylon jacket, black umbrella skirt, red leggings, black boots and, of course, a black umbrella in good condition to match the skirt.

My wife and i watched Squid Game on Netflix and it was our must see show: we couldn't wait for our son to go to bed.

It's about an organization that picks people who are in poverty or are deeply in debt and basically offers them a chance to win BIG ( i think it was about $25-30 million (IIRC, it was 246 million won (it's a korean show dubbed into english)))

The games are cool and weird like

The main character evolves from an asshole into a human as he loses friends over the course of the games.
Very interesting and with layers like an onion, slowly peeled as you watch.
Ended weird, but left it open for a second season.... we're hoping!

I'm very busy these days what with being an ignorant and vindictive evil capitalist exploitative PHB (and my lysdexia is getting worser) but at the weekend I finally got around to writing a couple of letters I've been needing to for a while.

One was political, and not really interesting in detail, but it marks "closure" or whatever touchy-feely term you want to use from my involvement with things Brexit. I'm in Scotland now, for the duration, and hoping for independence from the UK so that we can rebuild a properly democratic, fair, socially just and internationalist society.

The letter I wrote was the last one I will write to a mainstream UK political party, and it sets out some reasons amongst a rambling history of the last decade for why an erstwhile British citizen might relocate and seek independence.

I'm not sure I should expect a reply, or if I do what sort of reply it will be. All I can say is that, in public, the UK-wide political parties seem to be completely detached from opinions on the ground and are living in denial about the future.

I've done my bit. Time for a rest now. There's a house to be built.