Excited Delirium

Anger and opposition has swept to all-time highs following the choice of a number of radio stations to pull the song ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ because someone had complained about the content.

Very swiftly, the internet world was packed with memes of outraged traditionalists who mocked people that wanted to shed a little light on Christmas pageantry.

The following made the rounds on Facebook:

I understand the indignation, but I beg people who are incensed about this original action to pause and think for a second: it someone an enormous amount of energy and stress to come forward and identify that certain tunes just aren’t cool.

And let’s face it: despite the effort to mock people that want some level of civility during the ‘holiday season’, the reality is that the defensive tact taken above is all pretty true!

Sure, we have yet to ban rap songs that are littered with the ‘n-word’ or talk of ‘bitches’ and ‘hos’, but that’s coming too.

It’s really not a free speech thing.

It’s a reaction to a slow and painful inundation of idiocy that overwhelms average people at this time of year and, frankly, the time has come to scrutinize the memes that get tossed about as ‘tradition’ without consideration for the people that it hurts.

I would also argue that it’s done intentionally by a number of corporate broadcasters in order to fuel their call lines and add an intense level of righteous indignation just in time for the birth of Christ almighty.

To repeat, it’s not a free speech thing. It’s a dearth in creativity and sensitivity that we need to bring to our world.

People that are ‘affected’ by these changes are typically the same white, middle age people that are ravaging this planet like a hoard of locusts with no end in sight. Christmas just gives them an excuse to literally step on the gas and bring all seven deadly sins to a max.

And remember that this is not pie: you’re really truly not losing anything. But the people who make progress are making substantial gains.

If we really believe in miracles, let’s try to make everyone happy. Equally.

Is the Center for Disease Control (CDC) a pharmaceutical company?

Yes, according to Robert Kennedy, Jr.

This story that came out last week showcases Kennedy’s opinion that the CDC needs to change its ‘business’ model in order to ensure that the health of citizens overrides the health of the companies that utilize the institution.

Seems pretty reasonable, right?

Well, we know this story won’t make it to the mainstream press. They’re too busy being a business as well, and many of their top advertisers are pharmaceutical companies.

And it’s very unlikely that these media companies – despite being consistently labelled as ‘left-wing media’ (like that exists anywhere) – will investigate the claims being made.

So, suck it up … your health isn’t as important as the quarterly results for Big Pharma.

I saw this today and thought it might be worth re-posting:

Of course, there’s still something to be said for pushing the guilt on mass consumption in Europe, North American and Asia and finding a way to penalize us for it, but I have to agree that the spotlight gets shifted away from the real program.

The ‘look over there’ distraction is starting to fail.

This is an interesting article on GovTech about how we have to fix transit in order to fix cities.

The problem?

We have to fix democracy first.

You see, what’s happening is that we have endorsed the sprawl model for the last 100 years in North America at expense of the core. European cities have gone the other way and are succeeding with plans to build onto existing infrastructure.

In Europe, greater intensity of population in core areas result in greater decisions for the core that ultimately benefit everyone.

In North America, more sprawl translates to a dilution of municipal, provincial/state and federal voting into the hands of people that aren’t as motivated to change their ways of commuting and transportation as people in urban areas are.

Most of the response has typically come out as ‘I don’t want my taxpayer dollars going towards that … (subway, bike lane, downtown entertainment facility, etc) because I’ll never use it’.

This results in representation that also dilutes efforts to consolidate nodes within cities. Councilors, MPPs, MPs and others wind up being torn between what should be sensible objectives that will enhance the standard of living at the expense of the ‘me first’ mentality of car culture.

If we’re going to build great cities and fix issues like climate change and increasing levels of green-house gases, we have to rethink how our representation responds to car drivers as opposed to pedestrians, cyclists, commuters and maybe even a small handful of progressive drivers.

Of course, the greatest challenge will be to tip the scales in favour of urban voters. This may result in ‘city states’ that emerge and fund themselves as opposed to constantly going out to a public that is unwilling or uninterested in supporting bigger projects.

It’ll also mean rethinking how and why we let sprawl continue.

I know we’ll have endless reporting over the next few days, but there will be no tears here on the passing of the 41st President of the United States.

George HW Bush was an integral part of a deep well of espionage as well as leader of the military-industrial escalation for the world’s economies in the last half of the 20th century. He, his companies and his leadership also took us from a planet of potential to one of carbon-based economic ruin.

A little steep, right?

I suppose.

But when the obit appeared in the Washington Post, they had the curious number of ‘322’ beside the play button, I couldn’t help but be curious. Video length?

Or … an homage to his membership with the supposedly obscure ‘Skull and Bones‘ group from Yale?

You be the judge.

Here’s a little reminder from the Wiki page just in case you weren’t sure …

Cryptogon.com has left an open thread to discuss the Bush legacy and their connection with different groups. Feel free to join in.

Conspiracies … there’s no ‘me’ in conspiracies, but there’s certainly ‘spies’ and ‘CIA 🙂