gemini://tilde.pink/~denn/posts/Jan1621.gmi

Okay, I did say when I reset my blog that I was going to try and avoid politics as much as possible, but the whole thing on he 6th kind of at least temporarily shot that all down...

I'm not even sure where to start with all of this. Apparently since Trump lost the election through the nefarious machinations of the democrats (who were so super slick and ninja-like in their crimes that they left no evidence at all, because nobody has yet managed to get any in front of a judge...unless you go with the argument that there is evidence, but apparently every single judge Trump's lawyers have talked to have been in on a vast and well-nigh omnipotent conspiracy to deprive Trump of his win...), the only alternative was to show up at the Capitol, and break into the place. In the process getting several people on both sides killed, looting stuff, taking selfies, and apparently smearing shit on the walls.

This of course has resulted in a whole bunch of people getting arrested. Partly due to the genius-level act of posting selfies of themselves on social media, committing the crimes. Also partly due to Parler giving the FBI the info on a bunch of them. Partly due to the Capitol having it's own cell network, which logged the cellular activity of everyone that was present at or around the place. And partly due to lots and lots of video being taken, and a whole lot of people coordinating to identify and out the douche-bags pictured in those videos. Just remember the next time the alt-right says they're smart that they actually not only brought cellphones with them to commit a crime, but used them to take selfies at the scene, and post them to social media.

This in turn has resulted in a bunch of people facing a wide variety of charges. And lots of whining about how Trump should pardon them (good luck with that), and how this was really all antifa's fault. It wasn't, of course, and that has been debunked repeatedly, but it sounds good for the rubes. Some of the folks that attended may be facing really serious federal time in a [PMITA] prison because of the death of the Capitol officer. Nothing of value will be lost. Seriously, don't commit acts of domestic terrorism. It's bad, and probably won't accomplish what you're hoping it will.

On the bright side, one small solace, it has provided endless amusement as the people involved have been getting put on the no-fly list and discovering that they can no longer travel. Lots of great videos on youtube. Yes, I know, I shouldn't laugh at the misfortunes of others, but in this case, fuck them. Every single one of them can walk home.

The fallout from all of this includes Trump getting deplatformed from almost all social media (including his treasured twitter account), Parler losing it's hosting and imploding (though they may manage to return, alas), and twitter going on an alt-right purging rampage.

And to top it all off, they've threatened to do it all again for Biden's inauguration. Both in DC, and assorted state capitols. DC currently looks like a military base. There's something like 25,000 national guard in town, lots of barricades, check points... And the troops have apparently been authorized to use deadly force if necessary. So...Inauguration Day should be interesting.

Oh, and of course, lots of them are qanon cultists. It's like a mingling of cults...the Trump cult and the qanon cult.

On a completely unrelated and much nerdier note, I've decided to bite the bullet and learn Emacs as well. I've always shied away from it because the command short-cuts reminded me of WordStar and not in a good way. But then someone introduced me to Spacemacs, which seems to be a lot more reasonable. So, I've made a post New Year's resolution to do at least half of my editing tasks in spacemacs. We'll see how it goes. 😀

So much craziness...