CCSSite:Opinions

11/6/2024

Frak!

How the frak did this happen again‽ Like, seriously? I’m not surprised, but it’s just wild that we’re here again.

Supporting genocide did not help Kamala Harris’ campaign and now I full expect a whole lot more murdered people. This is an emotional take. I was expecting either outcome, but my body is having the same sensations as I experienced the morning after in 2016. I think what I’m experiencing is extreme disappointment in how many folks still voted for Trump.

Being in California, I was able to vote for Cornel West. A vote that didn’t count toward anything—and, looking at other state results, third-party voting has so far had no bearing on the outcome of this election. But this was a candidate that I actually had passion for. Why can’t we have nice things (like an anti-genocide position)?

Anti-genocide was the right direction (reguardless of election outcome) but it looks like we just get more pro-genocide. (yay /s) We have a couple of months to prepare. We know what to expect (but probably even more, plus some organization this time). *sigh*

10/27/2024

It’s been over a year—this devastating destruction of Gaza. Now Israel is bombing Lebanon. And Iran. So many thousands dead. I keep expecting that if we can show people what’s really happening, they’ll change their mind about supporting this atrocity—this genocide. Sadly, it seems it’s what many people want and it just breaks my heart and brain.

Dealing with the pandemic was supposed to be the defining moment of the decade, but it has merged with more wonton death and destruction. And now with the rise of LLM/Generative “AI”—we’re still not able to meet climate targets and capitalists are seriously suggesting we abandon the effort and focus on developing this energy intensive technology—technology that currently is actually very bad at what it does—in order to solve the issue.

Do these people hear themselves? Rather than not killing people (and the indirect killing through contributing to climate change) and cutting back on the fossil fuel emissions that are killing even more people—we’ve had major hurricanes that have devestated some regions of the U.S. (but I don’t even have the capacity to fully track that—plus all the other climate change linked disasters happening all over the world). It’s overwhelming! I hate it!

I’ve been organizing with folks to try to do what we can to reduce support for Israel’s inescusable behavior (a culmination of nearly three quarters of a century of oppression on Muslim Arabs. I’m thoroughly disabused of the notion that The United States is one of the “good guys.” It was founded on the same kind of colonial genocide and imperial oppression that brought Europe its wealth and position in the world.

I can’t remember the last time I felt non–stop horror on a daily basis. In the year of 2024, a country with pleanty of resources and stability is seemingly totally fine as long as its interests are maintained. We are so beyond the time when we came together on a massive scale to push back hard on this. Letting people die (and we know that they are—it’s not a secret to anyone) is just so not okay.

8/14/2024

Bernie Sanders.

This was a movement. A United States presidential candidate that carried the message echoing sentiments from Occupy Wallstreet. For me personally, I was moved by the possibility of a better world—or at least one where some things could be better. The words he spoke resonated with me. They weren’t revolutionary—just things that made sense and acknowledged the problems that were quite clear. For all the “advances” capitalism has made, it has clearly caused great harm to the world and to human society. That’s very much evident in the United States with wealth and health inequities.

Some moments during the campaign almost took on a magical quality. The bird landing on the podium is the epitome of that experience. Campaign materials were wonderfully designed too (in my opinion). The only campaign signs I have are from this campaign (I specifically recall the Rainbow version).

After having that taste of hope and real change. I’ve been quite disappointed with where we’ve landed with presidential candidates since then—at least the ones with a realistic chance to office. *sigh*

With the horrors of genocide in Gaza, the U.S. still meddling in other countries political goings on, the horrific treatment of folks within this country, I’m starting to lose hope in people. I was raised with the belief that people just aren’t capable of governing themselves and it’s not feeling wrong. I think this leads to people feeling the need to try force to get a unified direction (dictatorship). Although this can achieve the goals of forcing change, sadly, our desires can be so different that it just results in so much horror. Even a benevolent dictator just sets up a system for abuse because they won’t live forever (or maybe they just lose touch and become the kind of problem they were fighting against).

At this point in time, I really just want to be able to focus on more direct survival things. Let me tend to a garden, prepare food. I tire of all the abstraction capitalism puts on our lives.

4/5/2024

CW: This post gets into discussion of genocide and hate.

I’ve alternated between being absolutely distraught and feeling despondent over the state of the world. It is appalling what is going down in Gaza. I grew up learning about the horrors of The Holocaust. How absolutely vile it was. It’s unbelievable that a similar situation is unfolding in this age of worldwide connectedness. And to be implicated in it financially is— I just don’t have the words now.

I’ve been organizing with local community members to get our local government to adopt ceasefire resolutions. It’s shocking how much resistence there is. Some of the open hatred I’ve seen in those opposed is only something I’ve seen in movies or TV. The hate is vile and very real.

But this isn't the only genocide. We’re living in a time of concurrent genocide. Is that the norm?

We’re also facing lots of anti-trans hate. Anti-immigrant. Antisemitism. Anti-Muslim hate. Anti-Blackness. I haven't been able to even focus on some of this. Entire families are being bombed.

I’m tired. So tired. But I expect better than this.

1/4/2024

It’s been a long time since I did any edits to this website that were not just my Opinion pieces. Tonight I stayed up (among other things) adding some missing Nintendo game entries that I’d never added—despite having already created links to them). 20 year old broken links have started to get fixed. Having a primary computer that is a laptop again helps with spontaneous edits.

The way the web works these days has changed so much. This opinion page started off as plain HTML before I switched over to adding entries to a database. I think switching to my own hosting at that point allowed me to add more sophisticated components once I moved off of Lycos’ free Tripod site. That was to host it on my very own iBook (G3, Late 2001—have I talked about this elsewhere?). This site is still mostly composed of static HTML files, however. Ugh. It irks me a bit to copy entire pages with all the menus and stuff copied along with it. Perhaps that discourages me a bit from restructuring the site more unless I made it much more dynamic. But, I really don't touch it that much to justify the effort, probably. Oh, also, MIDI and QuickTime files with unsupported codecs are no longer how you put together a website. Social media really seems to have filled in that gap for most folks.

I created CCS Site to share a bit more about me and the things I loved. I haven't done that enough. Sunflowers are sorely missing from mention in the site (though I have a picture or two). I’m not sure though, if I should continue developing this site or leave it as a testament to the time period in which it was envisioned. I really do get a kick out of seeing <frameset> and <font> tags when I peek at the source…