It’s clear at this point that Putin is just playing with Trump — leading him around by the nose, saying “heel” when the whim strikes.
It’s also clear that Putin is perfectly willing to let Trump burn. Either Trump is blind to this possibility (hard to believe at this point, but after all, Trump is a narcissist), or Trump is terrified past the point of being able to think. In any case, whatever Putin has on Trump, it must be far more serious than peegate.
Of course, one thing that Putin does have on Trump is that Trump is a traitor. But by now this is public knowledge, so there must be something else — something that would send Trump and his family to jail for the rest of their lives.
It’s like we are in a slow motion zombie apocalypse.
People are being infected with a strange disease that leaves their bodies more or less intact, but affects their minds in strange ways. People with the disease become paranoid. They develop a tendency towards violence, both verbal and physical. They recognize each other, and are suspicious of everyone who doesn’t have the disease.
There is no cure. Rare cases of spontaneous remission are known, but in general the prognosis is grim. In most cases an infected person will remain mentally damaged until they die.
At this point perhaps 35% of the population is affected. The rate of infection has slowed significantly, and most of the remaining population seems naturally immune. But unfortunately, the collective deranged behaviour of the large population of sick people is causing serious problems.
The good news is that it is a slow moving epidemic, and we may be able to contain it. The bad news is that we will be caring for a large number of sick people for many years.
So in light of some of the recent reports of black people having the police called on them by white people for literally nothing, I thought it’s hard to really take in the magnitude of the issue
5/5/18: Woman calls police on a man inspecting real estate. He had already explained to the woman that he was removing the boards off of the door because he was an investor with a contract in inspect the property, even giving her a business card to verify he wasn’t lying. She told him he didn’t belong there and called the police. Luckily, these police responded appropriately and notified the woman if she interfered with the man further, they would arrest her. https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/16/us/investor-memphis-police-trnd/index.html
6/12/18: White woman calls police on black contractor working in a parking lot, just trying to do his job. Accuses him of being a danger because of his job there, but no charges for unsafe work conditions ever made. Basically, won’t let him work. He’s also being very polite. https://youtu.be/nezADvguDeI 6/22/18: White man (who owns a townhome but does not actually live in the community) uses his SUV to block a black woman doctor from entering her own gated community where she lives. In Buckhead, a black woman doctor was returning home to find a vehicle queued ahead of her. After waiting she realizes the vehicle was just sitting blocking the gate. She went to ask the person to make way so she could enter. The man tells her she “doesn’t belong here” and uses his car to prevent her from entering. Tells her he doesn’t believe she really lives there, then claims he’s protecting the community because there’s been an HVAC thief (like he thinks this dressed up in nice business clothes and heels driving a high end car is going to be going in there to load a central HVAC unit into her car that costs more than I could probably get a mortgage for). This complex uses key fobs for residents to open the gate, which she possessed. https://www.theroot.com/racial-profiling-at-its-finest-white-man-uses-suv-to-1827057448
6/24/18: White woman, Stephanie Sebby-Strempel, sees two black boys (age 15) at the local pool. They were the guests of a resident (i.e. were allowed to be at the pool and weren’t breaking rules). The woman violently treated the boys. She screamed “Get Out!” while threatening to call the police on them. She struck and pushed the boy in the chest and twice in the face, while he walked toward the exit, used racial slurs against them. The boys left politely, even saying “Yes, ma’am” to the woman. Luckily, due to the violence caught on camera, the woman was charged with third degree assault. Apparently, she bit a police officer. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/07/02/police-say-woman-screamed-racial-slurs-and-smacked-a-black-teen-at-a-pool-she-lost-her-job/?utm_term=.3bf7b1d322c4 6/25/18: Woman calls the police on an 8-year-old black girl selling bottled water on the sidewalk to pay for a trip to Disneyland. Her claim was that the girl was being too loud and she was working with her window opened. Too loud, on the sidewalk in the middle of the day in San Francisco…where it’s loud in general cause it’s a city. Then tries to play victim because of the backlash. https://people.com/human-interest/woman-called-police-8-year-old-selling-water/ 6/26/18: White woman gets in door of man’s car and refuses to let him close it to say he was in her way while he is in his car in a Cold Stone Creamery parking lot enjoying ice cream he’d just purchased there, instead of maybe just asking him to move or being nice. The man is nothing but polite acting. https://youtu.be/iP1CaqMsBNU 6/27/18: White cop in Ohio uses his daughter’s laptop to track her location and find her out with her black boyfriend (she’s 18 and not a minor, not that it excuses this but at this point who she dates is none of his business). Pulls over the boy and puts him in the back of the car blatantly saying he’ll “make shit up” to arrest him if he doesn’t get his daughter. The boy’s mother (I believe) comes out worried and is also threatened. When his daughter gets out of the car, he releases the boy and forces his daughter into the back of his car (ignoring an actual emergency call) – which at her age is abduction. All because her boyfriend is black. https://rollingout.com/2018/06/24/white-ohio-cop-well-make-s-up-after-stopping-black-boy-dating-daughter/ 6/27/18: Chicago police cuff boy and accuse him of escaping juvenile and having a gun. He’s 10, he hadn’t been in juvi nor did he have a gun. Boy is terrified, ya know, cause he’s 10. He’s obviously terrified seeing as how he was so scared he urinated himself. http://www.newsweek.com/chicago-handcuffed-michael-thomas-gun-juvenile-eddie-johnson-chicago-police-962873
6/30/2018: A white woman and her husband (who posts a bunch of racist stuff on FB as it seems) called the police on a 12-year-old black boy for cutting grass. The boy had started his own lawn care service and had a customer paying him to do her lawn. He accidentally went over the invisible property line between the two homes in a suburban neighborhood by about 12 – 18 inches, and the white woman called the police on him. She referred to her neighbor as “human garbage.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/06/30/a-white-woman-called-police-on-a-black-12-year-old-for-mowing-grass/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7677c6c9d701 7/2/18: A doctor at the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin asks a black employee “if she wanted to get lynched” in a meeting. http://atlantablackstar.com/2018/06/29/milwaukee-doctor-who-asked-co-worker-if-she-wanted-to-get-lynched-claims-it-was-an-ignorant-mistake/ 7/4/18 White man, Adam Bloom, calls the police on a black woman because she was swimming in the community pool where she lives with her own daughter on the 4th of July. He had followed the woman around harassing her and telling her she needed to show him ID. No person should ever feel compelled to just give anyone their ID, especially a woman since this would tell some strange man where she lived and everything. Outside of that, this pool required a key card to enter, which this woman had and used to enter the pool. Obviously she was a resident since she possessed a resident’s key pass. With the pool secured like there, there’s no reason for anyone to be asking anyone for an ID: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/man-who-called-police-black-woman-north-carolina-pool-no-n889371 7/5/18: A black family is at a funeral at a local catholic church. Hundreds of people were in the church for the viewing, and during the viewing an individual accidentally knocked over the chalice while trying to hug the deceased (which makes sense people would be clumsy while in grief). The white priest stopped the funeral and told the mourners they had to “get the hell out of my church.” The family was forced to unceremoniously carry their own mother out of the church without completing the funeral because the priest called the police on them to force them to leave. They were escorted to a funeral home out of the county for an on-the-fly alternative funeral. https://youtu.be/ukXCsiV73XM 7/6/18: White woman calls police on black woman for smoking outside in the parking garage (at the edge of the deck not enclosed) of her own apartment complex. Police show up and tell white woman that the black lady isn’t breaking any rules. White woman also threatens to try to have the black woman evicted: https://www.ebony.com/news-views/newportnancy-white-woman-calls-cops-on-black-woman 7/6/18: Black family enjoying their pool in their own apartment community has a white man call the police on them accusing them of breaking the pool rules for a small party of 6 people politely enjoying the pool. Calls the police on them to report breaking pool rules (seriously think the police should come out and enforce fricken pool rules). https://youtu.be/n7FsZZ6f9Aw
Plus the well-known:
Yale student has police called on her for falling asleep in her dorm lobby while studying.
Two black men have the police called on them for sitting in a Starbucks while waiting for the person they’re meeting to show up.
Golf club owner calls the police on black women (who are members) for playing too slowly.
Three black boys shopping for prom in a Nordstrom Rack had the police called for shoplifting (they weren’t)
A black trio staying in an AirBNB had the police called because they “didn’t wave back to the neighbor.”
Note that “Walkaway” is the title of a middling Science Fiction novel by Cory Doctorow, and a play on the word “walkabout”. I spent 45 minutes this morning tracking down and blocking puppet accounts associated with the hashtag #WalkAway
You couldn’t really be caught in this blizzard while standing by a cliff on Churyumov-Gerasimenko, also known as comet 67P. Orbiting the comet in June of 2016 the Rosetta spacecraft’s narrow angle camera did record streaks of dust and ice particles though, as they drifted across the field of view near the camera and above the comet’s surface. Still, some of the bright specks in the scene are likely due to a rain of energetic charged particles or cosmic rays hitting the camera, and the dense background of stars in the direction of the constellation Canis Major. Click on this single frame to play and the background stars are easy to spot as they trail from top to bottom in an animated gif (7.7MB). The 33 frames of the time compressed animation span about 25 minutes of real time. The stunning gif was constructed from consecutive images taken while Rosetta cruised some 13 kilometers from the comet’s nucleus.
