Sussing Out the Network

In a stunning blow to the Canadian insurrection, hackers were able to take down Give, Send, Go, the favored crowdfunding site of right-wingers worldwide:

BREAKING: GiveSendGo, the crowdfunding website used by the Freedom Convoy, is now redirecting to the domain GiveSendGone[.]wtf.

A video from the Disney film Frozen now appears alongside a manifesto condemning the website and the Freedom Convoy. pic.twitter.com/3TLAwfvZ3w

— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) February 14, 2022

Even better, there are reports that donor names and emails were released:

BREAKING: GiveSendGo, the crowdfunding website used by the Freedom Convoy, is now redirecting to the domain GiveSendGone[.]wtf.

A video from the Disney film Frozen now appears alongside a manifesto condemning the website and the Freedom Convoy. pic.twitter.com/3TLAwfvZ3w

— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) February 14, 2022

Even now, extremism researchers are combing through the data:

BREAKING: GiveSendGo, the crowdfunding website used by the Freedom Convoy, is now redirecting to the domain GiveSendGone[.]wtf.

A video from the Disney film Frozen now appears alongside a manifesto condemning the website and the Freedom Convoy. pic.twitter.com/3TLAwfvZ3w

— Mikael Thalen (@MikaelThalen) February 14, 2022

Maps have been compiled showing companies allegedly involved in the fundraising. One crazy statistic is that over fifty-percent of the funds came from American sources, and government employees from agencies ranging from the DoJ to NASA are implicated in raising funds for this insurrection. I can't imagine their employers would be too happy with these individuals supporting a hostile act against an allied government. The fallout of this stupid Canadian tantrum is going to hit a ton of people in the coming months... and I love it.

Dour Marxist Lightens Up

The Super Bowl is nothing but an overblown spectacle, an orgy of commercialism distracting the proletariat from the struggle necessary to liberate the workers from the systemic domination of Capital.  It is nothing more than a soporific, meant to dull the senses of the masses to their plight.  It would be better if the whole rotten event went the way of the dodo!!  Rather than watch the Super Bowl, that time would better be spent reading or watching or listening to The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord!!!

 

Oh, a text... it's the gang... whoa, how many pizzas did you get? Cool, I can pick up some beverages, maybe a variety of chips.Great, kickoff is 6:30, right? Yeah, I'll be over, looking forward to seeing everybody.

What?  Oh... yeah, about that... polemics tend to repeat themselves, the first time as self-righteousness, the second time as farce.

I Studied the Blade

What sort of housewarming present does one get for someone moving into a Manhattan apartment?  You buy something that doesn't take up too much space, for starters.  Dr Jen recently closed on a place and I figured I'd give her practical present:

I believe that, if possible, a gift should be freighted with meaning, and this one works on several levels.  On the simplest level, it's a practical object, suitable for everyday use, which can fit in a drawer in the kitchen.  On a slightly deeper level, it's a beautiful artifact, well crafted, and with a good feel in the hand.  It's also a callback to the 'Redheads with Knives' running joke.  

Finally, the Damascus steel of the blade is a reference to the good Doctor's Syrian heritage, and the blade, a pattern-welded blend of hard high carbon steel and softer low carbon steels, is a good balance... hard enough to hold an edge without being brittle, flexible enough to be tough without dullness.  A metaphor?  You be the judges.

Weird Alt Gay Porn Purveyors to the Rescue

I have to confess that I have been paying a lot of attention to the disruptive convoys in Canada for over a week.  In my post about the convoy, I mentioned that the theme song of the pushback, used to disrupt communications on convoy Zello channels, was Ram Ranch, a salacious song about gay cowboys at the eponymous estancia.  Now, Rolling Stone has covered the 'porno-metal' anthem of the resistance, with a shout-out to Noellenarwhal, one of the principal chroniclers of the convoys.  Today, the big reveal was that the chat-stream of the Windsor, Ontario bridge blockers was taken over by trolls:

"How does it feel to have the #RamRanchResistance controlling your communications?"

Heck yeah!!!

— Noelle - Reporting Live from The Ram Ranch🐓🍷 (@Noellenarwhal) February 11, 2022

Good job demoralizing and confusing these horrible people, all while monitoring their plans for further disruptions.  You trolls worked hard, now it's time to hit the showers like eighteen naked cowboys.

This use of an outré gay alt-porn creation to troll and undermine a right-wing campaign of fuckery reminds me of the time that gay dinosaur/bigfoot/whatever porn author Chuck Tingle nuked the Gamergaters from orbit when they tried to game the Hugo awards in order to make fun of women and people of color writing science fiction.  When Space Raptor Butt Invasion was nominated for a Hugo, Chuck Tingle made a public statement that Gamergate's primary victim Zoë Quinn would accept his award should he win.  It was a masterstroke that made the right-wing trolls look ridiculous, much like the constant interruptions of Ram Ranch makes the Canadian Convoy Clan sound ridiculous.

We might not get the heroes we are expecting, but we get the heroes we deserve, and it looks like weirdos who write unconventional gay porn are the ones who are... heh... rising to the occasion.

Right Wing Fuckery I Could Get Behind

I'm on record as having no real interest in professional sports- I'd much rather watch a bunch of South Asian guys playing cricket in a park, or a bunch of Irish girls playing camogie.  To me, professional athletics, besides being a means to have taxpayers subsidize billionaires, are a Debordian spectacle, with no match being more of an overblown show of excess than the Super Bowl.  

While I think the Super Bowl is a silly display, I don't think it's evil, though I have a keen awareness that Right Wingers believe that the Super Bowl Halftime show is an Illuminati ritual, brazenly conducted in front of an audience of millions.  That is the context in which AZ GOP whacko Wendy Rogers' tweet about disrupting the Super Bowl must be analyzed:

If they shut down the Super Bowl at least it would spare us and the children the evil wicked Satanic halftime show.

— Wendy Rogers (@WendyRogersAZ) February 7, 2022

I can get behind a convoy shutting down the Super Bowl, because it's a useless spectacle, attended by wealthy individuals (the cheapest tickets look like they cost almost six thousand dollars).  The idea of a bunch of Trumpers shutting down such an event is hilarious... I imagine that the local gendarmes would shut such a disruption down precisely because it would inconvenience the rich, moreso than they'd intervene in a convoy interfering with the freedom of movement of working people.

Do it, Trumpy truckers, punch up for once in your lives, see how the Powers that Be react to your intrusion into the bubble in which the most privileged Americans live.  Get that convoy mobilized and make the Super Bowl extra super!

A Fistful of Q Drops

Every once in a while, I post about Ron Watkins, the problematic proprietor of 8Chan, probable Q drop poster, and election audit partisan.  Watkins has a new grift, he's running for Congress in Arizona's 1st congressional district, and his new ad is a doozy:

Ron Watkins has just posted a new video.
I can’t even take this seriously at this point. pic.twitter.com/2gFmjY2ybx

— 2022 Karma (@2022_Karma) February 9, 2022

I can't even tell if he's serious or if he's trolling, but that Morriconesque soundtrack and washed-out, overexposed look add up to Pure Comedy Gold.  This is the worst Spaghetti Western I've ever seen- the Magnificent Seventeen starring in A Fistful of Q Drops.  The fact that his campaign website is CMZ Army (standing for CodeMonkeyZ Army but looking like CumZoneArmy) only makes the whole thing look more ludicrous and grotesque.

The 2022 GOP primaries are going to be a shitshow, all least there will be some comic relief now and again.

Big Big Boom!

I've been preoccupied with earthly matters lately, so I haven't been keeping abreast of things celestial.  That's how I missed this item about astronomers observing the progress of a supernova explosion.  Red giant SN 2020tlf flared up and ejected great gouts of gas before collapsing and exploding, a phenomenon never before observed.  

The artist's rendering of the process is quite dramatic, as befits a big boom on a cosmic scale: 

 

Here's where I note that I haven't posted on the progress of the James Webb Space Telescope launch, because I wanted to wait until the deployment was a fait accompli.  The telescope has come up in various Secret Science Club recaps, though.  If our astrophysicists are getting dramatic footage of supernova explosions from earthbound observatories, just imagine what sort of images will be obtained using an extraterrestrial observatory.