fresne999

[fresne999]

what is it abt bbc merlin that makes it. linger

[fresne999]

After seeing the Howl’s Moving Castle musical I am a changed person and I never want to see fanart of Sophie Hatter as thin and white ever again. 

If you weren’t aware that there was a Howl’s Musical, here ya go. Go throw money at this production company and hope they release an album or a recording because the show was honestly fucking perfect. We were in the front row and all five of us flailed so hard that the cast thanked us specifically “for our enthusiasm and energy” after the show. 

This Sophie, played by Seattle actress Sara Porkalob, is your new god. 

She has micro-expressions down to an absolute art and the best comedic timing I’ve ever personally witnessed. She exists and was the perfect Sophie and now you know. You’re welcome.

Sidenote but the night we saw it Howl was wearing a NEON PINK WIG and SPRAY PAINTED SILVER JEANS for almost the entire show and NO ONE will ever be a better Howl tbh.

And Lettie and Martha were also great! The entire cast was great! Their physicality on stage was unbelievable!! The writing was superb!!! I can never see another musical as long as I live because of how perfect this one was!!!!!

You’re welcome. 

[fresne999]

Some of it may be most people don't work with research scientists.

I have the oddity that I presently work for a technology company that has tech people, pure science let's nerd out to the point where my most consistent comment after a company meeting is "explain it like I'm 10 & put the key finding in the first minute" and then the more corporate finance/hr types. There are wildly different behaviors that count as professional for any of those.

There's something that bothers me a little about the complaints that the Preservation Alliance team aren't "professional" in the show compared to the books, and I think it's just... I have a different idea of what professional science looks like.

Even in the books, we don't actually see the team do that much science. They take some "samples", and SecUnit thinks of them as professionals, but other than SecUnit's internal monologue, they don't do that much more than in the show. They actually talk more about their work in the show than in the books!

I wonder if some of it is that the Preservation Alliance doesn't fit what people's idea of a competent scientist, particularly a competent scientist on TV, looks like. They're expecting the Big Bang Theory, or Gurathin bent over a computer terminal muttering "I'm in" as green code plays across his face, or Arada rattling off a bunch of jargon while dissecting an alien creature, or Bharadwaj IDing the alien remnant based on rocks or something. And that's not really how science actually... works.

Honestly, as a scientist, this is one of the more realistic depictions of actual science I could expect from a TV show, unless you wanted to watch several hours of people working quietly at their computers with expressions of various levels of exhaustion, annoyance, and stress on their faces, or sorting samples, or wandering around staring at the dirt, or sitting around debating the nature of "nature" and the ethical implications of terraforming or whatever (which would be cool, but also, not plot relevant, I'll just assume it's happening off-screen). I could sort half my coworkers by which character they're most like: the upbeat professor who's always trying to help (Bharadwaj), the hippy biologist who freaks out about disturbing 'natural processes' (Arada), the extra-friendly super outgoing possibly ADHD guy (Ratthi), and the overly cynical constantly complaining about capitalism and swearing over his grants analyst (Gurathin). I don't know who's got the open marriage because I prefer not to know about the sex lives of my coworkers, but I know some are in pretty messy relationships - that don't spill over into their work. Because they are professionals.

Basically, I look at this show and I see - my office. So when people say that they're not competent, that they're bumbling or not good scientists, honestly, it's kind of annoying. They're people, not just scientists, with stuff going on outside of their work, namely: someone's trying to kill them, something that absolutely none of them are prepared for. You don't learn how to handle that in grad school! Of course they're going to be messy and make mistakes - that's what people do. Scientists too.

[fresne999]

Murderbot tv - ep5-7, thoughts

Now that I have once again been so blessed as to watch Murderbot episodes 6 & 7 (and a rewatch of 5) a few maundering, meandering thoughts about the divergences and the complementary creatures that the books and the tv show are.

Also some massive digressions, because that is how I roll. 

Which, fair warning, is where I shall start.

William the Blorbos

Youtube served up a video to me about an old blorbos of mine. 

I speak, of course, of William the Marshall, the Good Knight.

And whose relationship -- err…patronage by -- Eleanor of Aquitaine put his life on the course that it did. 

I mean, in a general sense, WillyM had little in common with MB. What with being a 1200s Norman knight.  While on a routine escort mission, the group was attacked, he risked his life to enable a slightly older (30s to his 20s) woman to escape the ambush, and was himself injured and captured. But psych, that lady was the Queen of England. EllieA being no fool, ransomed his ass and offered him a job in her families' service as a true and parfait knight, which is how the next fifty years of badassery went. 

Don't get me wrong, William totally knew who Eleanor was. He didn't delete his memory or fail to read the packet because he was too busy listening to troubadours, but he was also a random knight and didn't have a lot of reason to think he was going to get ransomed and offered a job. 

Which, well, parallels end because Preservation Alliance isn't medieval Europe, and there was more for William to do. 

But where I'm going with this is that the video got me to thinking that a lot of folks who want to see Mensah and MB's relationship as maternal/child, don't have other models to work with. She's not his mom. She's not his boss. Not really. 

There is a social/human class differential between Mensah and MB. It's that differential that possibly reads to some folks as maternal, but MB is an adult who has been around the tourney circuit a few times. But as a gracious leader worthy of service, that works. 

vs The Prince

I'd already been thinking that in a lot of ways the Corporate Rim is set up as a Machiavellian hellscape where using people isn't just acceptable, it's expected to maintain power. Where deception is a key tool.

Gurathin was a spy. LeBeeBee is a spy/murderer, if by combat-proxy.

Not that LeBeeBee even bothers to have a consistent story. In Ep 6, she slightly changes aspects of her story from Ep 5: who she was indentured to, the length of that indenture, but all in the service of cozying up. She accurately spots Bharadwaj as someone who is open and vulnerable. For LeBeeBee, emotional connection doesn't exist. It's all in the service of millions of credits. Because that's how it is on the Corporate Rim. 

Even her on-going discussions sexualizing MB, who at that point she thinks she's just vaporized, is all in the service of pushing PresAux one way or another.

The Corporate Rim, like our world, is one in which cynicism is often celebrated. Nihilism is the praised response to the socio-political horror of the day. Engagement, well, that's what media is for.

Preservation Alliance is framed as full of naive rubes, because they don't ascribe to that paradigm. 

To be naive is to lack experience, wisdom, or judgement. 

In fiction, as in life, valuing concepts other than cynicism is often presented as naive. But I feel that the show, as an extension on the books, is presenting reaching out to others as a choice.

Bharadwaj isn't necessarily wrong to reach out to LeBeeBee. I mean, it could have gotten her killed. But LeBeeBee's chosing be self-serving gets her killed in this narrative. Because there is always a bigger badder baddie out there. Sometimes a SecUnit. Sometimes a giant worm-creature. 

Trusting LeBeeBee isn't safe, but it was a choice out of a perspective. 

Trusting Gurathin probably wasn't a great idea either, except it was. 

The books definitely give the impression, and the show is expanding on the idea that Preservation Alliance isn't a, "There's only so much room at the table" society, it's a, "Let's make a bigger table." 

It's not naivety for Mensah, having just seen MB grab Gurathin by the throat-hold-release-walk away to ask it to help protect their group. With full understanding that it has the choice not to, but that the compassionately pragmatic choice is to ask for its help. There's a simply lovely visual interplay between Mensah and Gurathin during this whole sequence of events that I missed the first time through. She's talking to MB, making her pitch, glances at Gurathin and the camera follows her gaze to where Gurathin is visibly uncomfortable, and she keeps going. It's not naive to ask for MB's help, despite MB being quite literally a weapon in Corporate Rim terms. 

It's about making choices about how you want to be, and the narrative is putting a lot of energy in first positioning PresAux as these weird hippies, and then refusing to privilege the Corporate Rim point of view as well. 

Chimes

That said, Arada. Sweetie, don't insult the lady with the gun. Don't run at the SecUnit trying to shoot you. 

Lovely. Fierce. Like to see it, but yeah, maybe no.

Also, she is the person who told LeBeeBee that she had a beautiful name. Given the glances that Pin-Lee and Ratti were giving her, I'm wondering if she was giving off, "I'm about to try to ask to add to the contract vibes," that they recognized. Until LeBeeBee was LeBeeBee, and Arada went, "Nope." 

I'm fascinated by the shift from book MB has not, never wants to kill someone in front of Arada, to this is a MB who very much has in fact very much killed someone in front of her. 

In a way, this places front and center who/what MB is for PresAux. 

For Arada, who looks at giant worms going at it and is filled with special interest delight. 

Flutes of Power

I don't have much to say here, but I was also listening to an old episode of TimeTeam, and they made an Anglo Saxon flute, and that thing sounded so much like the instrument Ratthin was playing. 

Kind of annoying sounding, but part of the musical landscape of a different culture. 

Two Sides of the Same Coin

I've seen much digital ink spilled on how Gurathin and MB are very similar, which no argument. 

Gurathin seeing MB as a sort of romantic rival for the favor of the great lady is very Book of Courtly Love of him, but reads to me as Gurathin misreading his own feelings because there aren't a lot of other scripts out there. 

Love is romantic love, except when it isn't. Sometimes it's misreading the gesture of a good friend to attend a lecture because you need a friendly face, or even really misunderstanding one's own emotions out of the powerful emotion of leaving a very bad place.

I suppose it says something about my friend set that the idea that PresAux's entangled romantic backstory makes a lot of sense to me.

But I want to speak of the other side of the coin. Not Janus over there, being Gurathin and MB, but Ratthi. 

Awkward. Seeming like he's gotten by on charm his whole life, but that only goes so far. Certainly better social skills, but not actually being all that good at it.

Reading the room as he comes in on Arada and Pin-Lee, but goes in anyway. If he were actually good at reading a room, he'd have left. Instead, he offers a massage, and ends up getting one. Not because he's trying to manipulate the situation, a la LeBeeBee. He is a golden retriever in human form, but he's also a very particular type of person who needs to connect and isn't quite landing that connection.

So he's always reaching, reaching, reaching. 

He steps back in the softer approach scene, but he also goes over to MB in the shuttle…and is tremendously bad at it. 

He plays murder-die-whatever video game player, but he's a fake/grinder.

Ratthi's been added -- perhaps temporarily -- to Arada & Pin-Lee's contract, but he's not a husband. He isn't connected. 

His whole, let's have a kid blurt, made me think about the water-like pressure in society to ask about co-workers kids. Oddly enough, MB reflects this by parroting its media and asking Arada if she has kids. I mean, MB don't care so it hasn't noticed that she doesn't have seven million kids. 

Pin-Lee and Arada haven't talked about it.

But Ratthi clearly has thought about it. 

That had all the hallmarks of someone who has thought about how he isn't plugged in. How, he's an adult, but not a person who is participating in the project of raising the next generation, which is a thing (even socialist societies it would seem) think one must do. Blady-blady-blah. And it leaks out in the worst way. 

Whereas Mensah…oh, Mensah, how much I want to put your favor on my sleeve and fight in the tourney for your honor.

Or something.

Serious as a Heart Attack

I'm of two minds if Mensah realizes she's having panic attacks or not. It's entirely possible that this is a new stress in the body phenomenon she only started experiencing after Bharadwaj and Arada are almost eaten by a giant worm, on the alien planet she and her team need to explore to help support her world getting necessary resources, and yeah that is just a new level of stress. She's far from her world, her partners, and any sense of normalcy.  

It's also entirely possible that she had panic attacks before coming to the world of worms and no (so far) resources.

Stress is an odd thing. It creates brain fog so it's hard to process input. It raises your blood pressure. Makes your heart beat fast. Gives tension headaches (from that high blood pressure). Makes a person feel like there is a ten pound weight on your chest and you cannot breathe. 

For a brief digress, I worked in a very stressful place for 9 years (8 years ago). At least once a week, I googled for signs of stroke &/or heart attack in women. I was having daily panic attacks, but it was also possible I was having a serious health condition. This is where brain fog comes in.

So seeing Mensah go through this and not know what's happening to her body was profoundly relatable to me. And it would seem tv MB, who has no heart and can't have a heart attack, but can have a panic attack. Who can / has been forced to go into the horrors for all of its life. 

There's something profoundly intimate about sharing the only tool in its toolbox for dealing with anxiety. Breathing the crystal air. 

Really kudos to Noma Dumezweni for conveying panic, anger, attempting to breathe in unison, realization regarding MB, which does serve to calm her all within a few moments. 

Breathing the Crystal Air

When I am stressed, I focus on breathing into my belly or box breathing. This helps shift my body from the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) to parasympathetic nervous system (rest & digest). My heart rate goes down as does my blood pressure. 

MB doesn't have a stomach to digest food. It doesn't have a rest and digest mode, or I assume a parasympathetic nervous system. MB doesn't have a heart. 

When I am stressed myself, or helping a friend having a panic attack/anxiety, I focus on my body. In particular the sense of smell, which can elicit emotional reactions.

Given the way MB talks about pheromones, I'm not sure it has a sense of smell. Certainly no pleasant memories to associate with a certain smell.

What MB has, all it has, is its shows, which it has memorized, connects to, and yeah, I would delete a manual too if that's all I had to keep myself from having a panic attack.

MB has exactly one tool and seeing Mensah realize that in real time was beautiful.  

Bitter and Sweet

Bitter and Sweet could just be a party game, but I keep thinking about social relationships in stressful situations. How important it is to connect and hash out difficult things. I do wonder if the show isn't positing Bitter & Sweet not so much as a game, but as a way for people in Preservation Alliance to confront and deal with possible rough edges in relationships. 

First say the sweet. The thing you love. Then get out of the way the bitterness between you that could be a problem while on a survey mission. Then join hands and articulate that "We can talk about this." It's not something that has to be buried or pushed down. We can talk about this. Safely. Without recrimination. It's safe. We can talk about this.

Preservation Alliance is not a culture that values silence. Being quiet. 

Sitting there at that table in a fancy restaurant in the belly of the beast. The Corporate Rim. With everyone around them going, why so loud, ye rubes. 

Whatever.

Present Tense

I find it interesting that Gurathin's emotional connection to that low point in his life is present tense. He's not, "I was a spy. I was considering suicide." It's all present tense. It's living. It's alive. It's right there.

Which makes sense.

He's gone back to the Corporate Rim. Because he's naive, too.

L v B: Paying for children

Debt for children.

Licenses for children. There's a lot of context for that concept in Science Fiction. Folks can only get the licence after they take the class / get certified. Licenses are limited because resources are limited / there is overcrowding.

In a lot of ways, as a science fiction reader I'm set up to expect that Preservation Alliance would be the world that would require a license to have a child. There aren't limitless resources. They do believe in therapy modules and treating people right, and that would include children, and would fit a norm of requiring license in the same way I need a driver's license to drive.

But no. 

Because this is a Corporate hellscape. Licenses because Corporate overlords want folks to pay to create the next generation of workers.

Versus Bharadwaj's the entire society of Preservation Alliance bears the cost of raising a child. Not just having it, but the raising to adulthood.

I always like it when science fiction addresses that this process isn't free. That raising children is a group project. 

Island Chain

We continue to tease out why PrexAux is on planet, and it's such an interesting delicate shift from the books.

In most cases I would expect a book to go more into depth about the mechanisms of a socialist society, but MB aggressively doesn't care. 

In the tv show, it makes sense that we'd get more information about Preservation Alliance because MB is no longer narrating our story. TV is third person omniscient. 

We get little name drops about the Captain who rescued the colonists from the failed colony planet where PresAux ancestors were left to sink/swim/die. We get discussions about how needs are met, but there's also debt to bring in resources.

I continue to like this deepening of why PresAux is out there, because it gives gravitas to why they are bending their principles to use/bring to the world a SecUnit. 

Once one is in the Preservation Alliance, they have reached a base level utopia of the sort that occurs in a world without teleporters and replicators and fabricators. But I think about islanders (I have a different island in mind than you may think) and how they may need resources.

Consider how amazed Bharadwaj was by the medical bay. I mean she was high, but also I don't think they have those resources in Preservation Alliance. 

The Corporate Rim gives nothing for free. 

Whereas in the books, a lot is open to interpretation about Preservation Alliance, because MB doesn't care. We get a festival. Various polycules. There's a side to 1 of the planets in the 3 planet alliance that isn't terraformed.

We're told they barter within systems and credit/money on the station. 

Barter. They barter. 

Mr Shorty Would Like Word 

So in addition to being interested in certain medieval figures, I'm really into bronze age societies, and learning about ancient people's. 

That means when I hear barter, I don't go…ah ha utopia they are beyond money, or even get into what I think credits in Star Trek actually represent given physical things can be replicated, it means I think about how barter systems historically worked. 

Which can be, "thank you doctor for treating my child, have a chicken," but it's also trade goods. 

Or put another way that Tumblrinas may grok, Ea Nasir of the terrible copper lived in a barter system society and was a copper trader.

Copper was a barter good. Processed copper that has had the arsenic etc. taken out is good copper, and unprocessed copper is bad, because then you've got to deal with getting the arsenic out. When you've traded goods for good processed copper and you get the shit with the arsenic still in you get annoyed and write letters. Or send your boy "Mr. Shorty" to "speak" sternly to the copper merchant. Yes, the person receiving copper might have wanted to make some bronze (after they got their tin on), but just as likely they wanted a trade good.

Another common barter/trade good was fabric. So barter makes me think about pre-industrial household engines where women were spinning flax and wool into thread, to weave into different types of fabric on looms that were dedicated to making that kind of fabric. Where women were gathering the items to dye the thread and/or fabric. Where that fabric could then be used to trade for things that you wanted, because you can't make homemade clothes without fabric and fabric takes (in a pre-modern sense) *a lot* of labor. Like a lot alot. 

Preservation Alliance with their home made clothes and their barter system.

At this point, I'm kind of imaging the Preservation Alliance as the Minoans, who probably weren't as utopian as early archeologists want to think, but also appear to have had good diets cross societally given the bones they left behind. I mean, nice place, enough to eat, but there's limited natural resources for say making bronze, and you need bronze or you're not in the Bronze Age, you're just scraping by with flint. 

Preservation Alliance has enough food, but what about therapeutics made in advanced facilities or possible certain kinds of metals or computer chips or whatever? That requires trade.

I think about how the Minoans were able to get value for their trade goods by making really fancy worked leather goods and luxury items, and how that can't work for Preservation Alliance, given how the Corporate Rim prefabricates clothing / goods.  

But I also think about the Minoan bull leapers who went to Egypt. I think about people in present day who immigrate from their homes to work and send money home to their families in less economically advantaged countries. 

Labor is also a thing that is bartered. So, I'm really intrigued by the revelation that the mission to this planet is because Preservation Alliance has debt to the Corporate Rim / Corporations. That the reason they don't immediately pull the ripcord when things get strange is because they need to be there. 

They are Bull Leapers in xenophobic Egypt bringing the copper and tin home. 

For Science

Bharadwaj is right though. It's also for science.

It's Arada getting her passion about biological lifeforms out there when the compatible creatures are going at it.

Sex and death.

Sex. It causes eggs. Which leads to life, which leads to death. To a certain way of thinking.

The Crowd didn't Rejoice

There were a number of ways the show could have handled LeBeeBee's death. They went with realistic shock and horror. They went with SecUnits don't just kill, they can overkill. Like a lot of overkilling. 

MB wears its helmet, has its shield from gaze, and takes no chances. LeBeeBee isn't given even the chance of a last mental impulse to pull a trigger. It's meant to be shocking and by the PresAux reactions, we the audience are given direction on how we're meant to take these events.

This isn't Mortal Combat - kill-die-video game, flawless victory, out with the spinal column. This is meant to be shocking. 

This is Ratthi going, "I'm friends with a SecUnit," and blithely not grokking that MB isn't human. Doesn't want to be human. 

I'm actually inclined to wonder at this point if the reason why MB doesn't have any obvious mods like in the books, even as far as say a Seven of Nine thing on the forehead, is to create that sense of humanity that is skin deep. Where the audience and PresAux go, coded human, but no. 

Mensah slicing that long cut to open up skin and reveal metal mesh. A metal spinal column. Human-ish connective tissue that is probably organic and is probably also synthetic. Because MB is a whole confused being. 

That MB talks about liking killing LeBeeBee (a statement I don't necessarily take at face value) directly after saying that PresAux thought they were getting to know it. 

Or maybe I do.

It fulfilled its function. It had a win. LeBeeBee died. But no Huzzah.

Huzzahs when the worm kills the SecUnit with its face behind the mask. "Stay calm," while shooting. 

That PresAux has been defining MB as human. Look, human face, etc. 

But it's not.

Yes, it doesn't want to be treated as an object, but it's been very clear that it does not want to be seen as a human either. 

I do think that part of the reason that plot arc of leaking fluid/neural tissue in ships is partly there is to further emphasize that MB is cousin to the hovercraft more than it is cousin to us. 

It gets up from back surgery to go repair the craft. It's not human. If isn't there and then it is to shoot LeBeeBee. It's not human. 

Interwoven in this is the Sanctuary Moon romance of the captain and the NavBot. With the captain ordering NavBot to sit down, and being so sure that of course the goal is to be more human.

Gurathin and Medbay

I do wonder that Gurathin didn't take the time while MB was getting patched up to patch up as well. 

Delighted Mensah wasn't dead.

Distracted by tasks.

There wasn't time.

But priority wasn't given. A choice of sorts.

Phallic and Yonic

Okay, on one hand we've got LeBeeBee saying that MB is owned. A thing. If they want to modify it, they can. Transform the walking weapon with guns in its arms. Give it a phallus.

Meanwhile, MB is asking Mensah (Temmy is in the well) to cut open its back in massive yonic imagery that I kind of wanted to hang a Georgia O'Keefe painting and call it a day. 

Except MB prioritizes repairing its back. Becoming whole again. 

Which, okay, I'm really bouncing around here, but I'm going to link to a poem by Rilke about Euridice. 

Here Rilke imagines that in death, Euridice casts aside gender roles and, 

"...She found herself in a resurrected virginity; her sex closed like a young flower at nightfall. And her hands were so weaned from marriage that she suffered from the light god's endlessly still guiding touch as from too great an intimacy…

She was already loosened like long hair and surrendered like the rain and issued like massive provisions. She was already root."

I thought about this imagery MB had its back repaired. Closed. Pulling back from touch. Root as it imagines itself becoming a lump in the natural landscape in it's dream of dying through lack of motion.

But apart. Not truly part of the green.

Not enough media to just walk away and die.

MB is Euridice becoming root, and hacking its own root files.

MB is Orpheus turning back from the perimeter.

[fresne999]

from the executive producer of murderbot on the possibility of season 2 !! 👀

(article link in the comment)

[fresne999]

The thing that really got me in episode 7 of murderbot is that the hostile unit used it's buffer/canned lines when it attacked. I think this hints that these secunits that are attacking them are people who are trapped in service to the corporations rim just like murderbot was. Which, yeah, obvious to us. But to presaux, who say all the right things but still have deep rooted biases against secunits (example: cheering when they killed hostile secunit at deltfall but moralizing and shying away from murderbot for killing leebeebee). It shows how even well-intentioned people can still be prejudiced, especially when they have never been around someone who challenges those preconceptions. I think Mensah and murderbot's relationship is a good example of how it isn't murderbot's responsibility to teach presaux to be better. It is their responsibility to do the work of dismantling their prejudice. Mensah is doing the work. She is a good leader. I adore her. The line about having to reckon with attacking that unit at deltfall was so fucking good. It really shows that Mensah truly sees murderbot and other units as people, or is at least beginning to internalize that they are. I love this show.

[fresne999]

Years ago I had an idea for something like that based-ish on the life of Chevalier d'Eon, but then went yikes the historical research. But yes. Someone do it.

Reverse Mulan about a young man who disguises himself as a noblewoman and has to learn how to do passive-agressive politicking at dinner parties.

[fresne999]

On a similar theme, the way genetics studies are shedding light on the consequences of enslavement.

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.ade4995

As well as

Black Americans have been demanding compensation and restitution for their suffering since the end of the Civil War. 40 Acres and a Mule remains the nation’s most famous attempt to provide some form of reparations for American slavery. Today, it is largely remembered as a broken promise and an abandoned step toward multiracial democracy. Less known is that the federal government actually did issue hundreds, perhaps thousands, of titles to specific plots of land between 4 and 40 acres. Freedmen and women built homes, established local governments, and farmed the land. But their utopia didn’t last long. After President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, his successor, Andrew Johnson, stripped property from formerly enslaved Black residents across the South and returned it to their past enslavers. Over the course of two and a half years, a team of Public Integrity reporters, editors, and researchers identified 1,250 Black men and women who had earned land as reparations after the Civil War. From there, the team conducted genealogical research to locate living descendants of many of those who had received and then lost the land. For the first time, these living Black Americans were made aware of the specific land that had been given to and then taken away from their ancestors. This project is an unprecedented and innovative use of Freedmen’s Bureau records—an impossible task for most of American history, until recent advances in genealogical research and the digitization of thousands of pages of Reconstruction-era documents made it feasible.

"Forty Acres and a Lie": incredible work in investigative journalism from Reveal

[fresne999]

Apple TV Murderbot + Text posts

[fresne999]

McDonalds’ ad mascot, Mac Tonight, who urged people to visit McDonald’s for dinner. 

The actor who played Mac Tonight, Doug Jones, later on starred in Gullermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water as the gillman. 

[fresne999]

As ICE agents dragged Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and a candidate for mayor, down the hallway of a federal courthouse this week, he repeatedly—and politely—asked to see their judicial warrant. Lander had locked arms with an undocumented man he identified as Edgardo, and refused to let go. Eventually, the ICE agents yanked Lander away from the man, shoved him against a wall, and handcuffed him. Lander told them that they didn’t have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens. They arrested him anyway.

The courthouse is only a few blocks away from the one where Donald Trump was convicted last year of 34 felony crimes for falsifying business records. His supporters painted the criminal-justice process as a politically motivated witch hunt. But none of them seems to mind now that masked ICE agents are lurking behind corners in the halls of justice to snatch up undocumented migrants who show up for their hearings. This was not the first time Lander had accompanied someone to the courthouse, and it wouldn’t be his last.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed that Lander had been “arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.” The whole thing is on video, so anyone can see that there was no assault. Lander is about as mild-mannered a politician as they come. Matt Welch, a libertarian blogger and no fan of Lander, wrote on X that the only things Lander had ever assaulted were “Coney Island hot dogs and school-zone speed limits.” He’s the kind of old-fashioned elected official who doesn’t much exist anymore, the kind you see at public-library events or can call when your kid’s day care is shut down and know he’ll actually do something about it. A different kind of politician would have milked the attention for all it was worth. But if Brad Lander were a different kind of politician, he might be first and not third in the polls. “I did not come today expecting to be arrested,” he told reporters after being released. “But I really think I failed today, because my goal was really to get Edgardo out of the building.”

People who are used to living in a democracy tend to find it unsettling when elected officials are arrested, or thrown to the ground and handcuffed for asking questions at press conferences. They don’t like to see elected officials indicted for trying to intervene in the arrest of other elected officials. And they find it traumatizing when, as has been happening in Los Angeles and elsewhere, they see law-abiding neighbors and co-workers they’ve known for years grabbed and deported.

The question now is what Americans are going to do about it.

Los Angeles has offered one model of response. Although Trump campaigned on finding and deporting undocumented criminals, in order to hit aggressive quotas, ICE has changed its tactics and started barging into workplaces. Citizens have reported being detained simply because they look Hispanic. Residents of one Latino neighborhood recorded ICE officers driving in an armored vehicle. Many residents felt that the raids were an invasion by the president’s personal storm troopers, and marched into the streets in response.

The first groups of protesters were organized by unions, but soon, other Angelenos—of many ages and backgrounds—joined them. Most of the protesters were peaceful, chanting and marching and performing mariachi around federal buildings in downtown L.A. But others were not. They defaced buildings with graffiti and summoned Waymos, the driverless taxis, in order to set them on fire.

The right seized on a chance to reinforce the narrative that California is in the grip of dangerous radical-left activists, categorizing the protests as “violent riots.” Trump overrode Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, to deploy the National Guard, and sent in Marines to protect ICE officers. Of course, that meant only that more Angelenos came out to protest. There were arrests and rubber-coated bullets and clouds of tear gas.

I would have thought that the reaction to the protests from anyone outside the MAGAverse would have been pretty uniform. Democrats have been warning Americans for years about Trump’s descent into authoritarianism. Now it is happening—the deportations, the arrests, the president’s face on banners across government buildings, the tank parade. “Democracy is under assault right before our eyes,” Newsom said. And yet, so many Democratic leaders, public intellectuals, and members of the media seemed distinctly uneasy about the protests. Yes, they seem to say, ICE has been acting illegally, but what about the Waymos?

In The Washington Post, David Ignatius fretted about protesters waving Mexican flags and wondered if the “activists” were actually working for Trump. Democratic leaders were “worried the confrontation elevates a losing issue for the party,” The New York Times reported. Politico raised a more cynical question: “Which Party Should Be More Worried About the Politics of the LA Protests?”

Many Democrats denounced vandalism while supporting the right to protest. But the Democratic Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was harsh in his criticism of the protesters, lamenting that the random acts of violence and property damage by a few bad actors would cause Democrats to lose the “moral high ground.”

There is a time for politicians to fine-tune a message for maximum appeal. But this is a case of actual public outrage against the trampling of inalienable rights. This is not a fight for the moral high ground; this is a fight against authoritarianism.

Democrats made themselves hoarse warning against the threat to democracy Trump’s second term would present. They invoked autocracy and even fascism to stir the public to keep Trump out of office. Obviously, it didn’t work. But that threat is no longer abstract. It’s now very real. And for all the speeches imploring Americans to save democracy at the polls, the Democratic establishment seems remarkably tepid about supporting Americans defending democracy in the streets.

Yes, Democrats would have an easier time in the court of public opinion if no protester ever picked up a can of spray paint. And certainly, setting cars on fire is not good. I myself would love to have a nice, quiet summer. But I want to save our democracy more. We can’t afford to get distracted for even a moment by the excesses of a few protesters, which are vanishingly small compared with the excesses of the president of the United States.

Defending liberty is a messy business: You might remember all that tea tossed into Boston Harbor. The phrase “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God” was once considered for the Great Seal of the United States. (Thomas Jefferson adopted it for his own seal at Monticello.) And yet, although the civil-rights movement is remembered for Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil disobedience, the movement included riots and armed activist groups. Violent protests, such as the Oakland riots of 1967, were a significant part of anti-draft and anti–Vietnam War movements. Their violence did not invalidate the causes those earlier movements sought to advance, any more than the property damage caused by a few activists today invalidates the claims of the great majority of peaceful protesters. Historically, protest movements are seen as “civil” only in retrospect.

For a party that you’d think would be fighting with everything they’re worth, Democrats seem remarkably focused on preserving the status quo. Even after the loss of the presidency and both houses of Congress, Democrats won’t shake anything up. Despite her popularity, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been kept out of any committee-leadership position. David Hogg, the young anti-gun activist, was ousted from his position as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee after he announced his plan to back primary challengers against older Democratic incumbents in hopes of breathing new life into the party.

Earlier this week, Trump announced on Truth Social that he had directed ICE to focus on what he sees as enemy territory: Democratic-leaning cities that have “turned once Idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia.” New York and L.A. are both sanctuary cities—they have passed laws pledging to limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities. We shouldn’t be surprised to see more citizens of these cities stepping up to protect their neighbors and their communities.

That is exactly what Lander was attempting to do when he was arrested. “This is part of what authoritarians do,” Lander told Democracy Now following his release. “Our challenge is to find a way to stand up for the rule of law, for due process, for people’s rights, and to do it in a way that is nonviolent and insistent, demands it, but also doesn’t help them escalate conflict.”

Lander’s clarity in this moment makes him a rarity,  even in the highest levels of the Democratic Party. Last Saturday, when an estimated 5 million Americans protested the Trump administration and New Yorkers marched up Fifth Avenue, two of New York’s most powerful elected officials, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, the minority leaders of the House and the Senate, were in the Hamptons, dining on bavette and chilled English pea soup to celebrate the marriage of the megadonor Alex Soros to Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide. Meanwhile, Lander was out in the streets, side by side with his constituents.

A few days later, leaving the courthouse, he assured New Yorkers that he was fine, his only lasting damage a button torn from his shirt as a result of ICE’s rough treatment. But, he warned, “the rule of law is not fine, and our constitutional democracy is not fine.”

[fresne999]

The Trump administration will make sweeping changes to Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage that could kick more than a million people off the rolls.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a subsidiary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), will cut the annual open enrollment period from 11 weeks to nine, rescind Biden-era monthly opportunities for low-income people to receive coverage, limit gender-affirming care, and exclude Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients from obtaining overage, among other changes, according to Axios.

CMS said the new policies will lower marketplace premiums by an average of 5 percent, saving $12 billion a year. However, between 725,000 and 1.8 million people are expected to lose coverage, CMS projections show.

[fresne999]

Every year on Juneteenth there seems to be some misunderstandings of the significance of the day, ranging from the idea that it took two years for Texas to learn of the Emancipation Proclamation (false) to it being the final end of slavery in the United States (not quite). I started writing up some thoughts on the long and complicated history of emancipation in the United States that turned into this long and complicated timeline. I'm hoping this will be useful for greater understanding of the importance of Juneteenth.

1780 - Pennsylvania became the first state to pass an Abolition Act. This legislation began ending slavery through gradual emancipation. Gradual emancipation became the model followed in the Northern states include Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey from the 1780s to the 1820s. Gradual emancipation typically freed people born after a certain date and children born to enslaved people, while others were kept enslaved until they reached a certain age or for the remainder of their lives. By the 1840s these states no longer had enslaved people except in New Jersey where there were still 16 people in enslavement until 1865. New Hampshire never legally abolished slavery, but was also effectively a free state by the 1840s.

1783 - Enslaved people in Massachusetts sued for their freedom stating that they should be free under the new Massachusetts state constitution. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court agreed, effectively making Massachusetts the first state to fully abolish slavery.

1791 - Vermont entered the Union as a new state with abolition of slavery encoded in the state constitution. Ohio, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas, and Nevada also entered the Union as free states.

1808 - The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves goes into effect making the transatlantic slave trade illegal. However, since the children of enslaved women were considered property of the enslaver, slavery propagated within the United States and the domestic slave trade thrived. Smugglers also continued to traffic enslaved people from Africa and the Caribbean to the United States, with the latest known instance being the Clotilda arriving in Alabama in 1860.

April 12, 1861 - The American Civil War begins after eleven Southern states begin an insurrection against the Federal government. The key issue is the expansion of slavery to new states and territories which newly elected President Abraham Lincoln opposes. At the start of the war, the official position of Lincoln and the Federal government is that the war is to preserve the Union, not to end slavery.

January 1, 1863 - The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect freeing enslaved people in states in insurrection against the United States. This was primarily a military measure meant to deny the Southern insurrectionists the labor of enslaved people. The Emancipation Proclamation excluded the border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri as well as parts of Louisiana and Virginia that were already under control of the Union Army. Since the Proclamation only applied to places not controlled by the Federal government, it effectively freed no one. However, enslaved people who escaped to the Union lines or were in territory subsequently captured by Federal troops were then permanently emancipated.

June 20, 1863 - The western counties of Virginia separate to form the new state of West Virginia, with gradual abolition written into the state constitution.

November 1, 1864 - Maryland abolishes slavery.

January 11, 1865 - Missouri abolishes slavery.

February 27, 1865 - Tennessee abolishes slavery.

June 19, 1865 - As the war was going poorly for the Confederacy, enslavers began sending enslaved people to Texas, the most remote of the slave states. Texas would be the final state to surrender to the Union. On June 19, Union Major General Gordon Grange declared all enslaved people free in accordance of the Emancipation Proclamation. This is the origin of Juneteenth.

December 18, 1865 - The Thirteenth Amendment was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865 and after ratification by three-fourths of the states, it became effective on December 18. The Amendment effectively ended chattel slavery throughout the United States including Kentucky, Delaware, and the 16 enslaved people in New Jersey.

BUT…the Thirteenth Amendment also include a penal labor exemption, meaning that people convicted of crimes could be forced to perform labor. From the convict lease programs of the 19th century, the the chain gangs of the 20th century, to mass incarceration in the 21st century, penal labor has been abused while often being targeted against Black people.

In other words, we still haven't seen the full abolition of slavery in the United States.

[fresne999]

[fresne999]

I suppose it's not a bad thing that this series of posts has caused me (so many times in my life) to hyperfocus. But hey, why should I have all the fun.

There is a subsequent post (all Dissent all the time) post to the two above asking for more information to fill in numbers for the events that happened.

So if you know of an event that's not in the spreadsheet, fill it in.

Or hyperfocus like I'm doing to dig around to find events and fill them in based on local media sources. I've done 40 so far. History isn't written by the victors. It's written by those willing to hyperfocus. And this is the hyperfocus site.