The Thunderbolt 170810 Dark Universe
Dana Walker
The Thunderbolt
News — Commentary — Calendar of Activist Events — Dumb Jokes
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1) FYI Section:
1A) Update from West Central Park Project
1B) Update from Just Housing
1C) Net Neutrality Under Attack
2) Downtown Isthmus Development Meeting
3) Film Screening: All the President’s Men
4) Dana Lyons In Concert
5) Race in Film Series: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
6) Bonus Tip of the Day
A detailed description of all events is located after the News and Commentary section
To go directly to an event description just type the index entry above into a search box
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Dark Universe
170810
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Shameless Self Promotion Division
Hey, Kids!
In spite of a dearth of official fame recognition or awards of any kind, the Thunderbolt has been your source for the inconceivable unbelievable unthinkable implausible yet always factual facts and accurate assessments of those facts for many years now. In addition, the Thunderbolt has been the most accurate predictor and prognosticator of political perfidy that is on the market for that entire time. Other than one academic who (I feel) used a flawed mathematical algorithm to accidentally come to the correct conclusion — other than that guy I am still the only left-leaning commentator that I know of on the whole worldwide Interweb who used factual analysis to correctly predict that the Rump was going to win the presidential election, for instance. If anyone knows of anyone else who is on the record using factual analysis to predict that the Rump was going to win — or if you would like to know the facts that I analyzed in order to come to that conclusion — then please contact me at dana...@gmail.com as I would like to hear from you.
Thanks.
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By the way: Though it was in pre-Thunderbolt days, in 2006 I also warned all my friends and family that the 2007 financial collapse was coming. I suggested that they immediately sell their homes (especially if they still owed money on them); I suggested that they close their bank accounts, and I suggested that they convert all their cash into gold. Real estate markets and the American dollar subsequently collapsed while gold went from a little over $400 per ounce to eventually reach a high of over $1,800 per ounce.
Then, after the crash I had to listen to ‘economic experts’ on the media machine intone about how no one could have seen the 2007 collapse coming even though I had figured it out whilst sitting inside a federal prison.
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I Told You So!
A long time ago I warned readers that Mike Pence was in tight with Eric Prince, the founder and owner of the former Blackwater, a criminal gang of highly trained and well paid murderers. Mr. Prince himself escaped the United States one step ahead of indictments and has lately been contracting his gang of murderers to the Chinese government.
Democracy Now just reported that Mr. Prince is currently in negotiations with the Rump administration to ‘privatize’ the war in Afghanistan and turn the task of ‘defending’ Afghanistan over to Mr. Prince.
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My question would be this: Who will protect Afghanistan from Mr. Prince?
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Perspectives
One million seconds is about two weeks.
One billion seconds is about 32 years.
One trillion seconds is about 32,000 years.
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Schools vs. Wars
Last year, Olympia High School spent $115.5 million to operate — or just a little less than four years if you break that number down to one second per dollar.
http://osd.wednet.edu/media/osd/budget_survey/Budget%2016-17%20Summary%20for%20Posting.pdf
The Pentagon budget for last year was $582.7 billion — or just under 18,500 years at one second per dollar.
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Natural Consequences
A very powerful fact that anti-racist activists continuously fail to use is that the natural consequence of racism is eugenics.
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Words
Words are very important things. I could not publish this newsletter nor record my radio show without words, for instance.
Words are also funny things, though. In and of themselves, words are completely harmless. Words are not only merely sounds, but frankly they are rather unimpressive sounds when compared to, say, a lion’s roar — much less something like a thermonuclear explosion.
On the other hand, words are what allow humans to communicate such incredibly deep and detailed information with each other, and words are probably the central tool that has allowed us to accomplish all of the truly miraculous things that we have indeed accomplished — so in that sense words are very powerful things indeed.
All of that said, though — the only power words have is the power that we choose to give them. Without the added meaning that we attach to these sounds — they mean absolutely nothing.
These attributes have created a paradigm wherein the very people that choose to allow themselves to be offended by certain words are also the very same people who assure that word’s continued existence and who assure that word’s continued popularity.
Plus, it makes it entirely too easy to offend them should one wish to do so for any reason.
On the personal level, not only am I a radical anti-censorship-of-any-kind-for-almost-any-reason activist but, for the reasons just stated, I also think that people who allow themselves to be shocked and offended by certain words are stupid — and I think that actually making rules and laws to ban such words constitutes idiocy on an astronomic scale.
In 2013, I recorded a Poppy Seed Street piece that posited it would be better to laugh at and make fun of ‘bad’ words rather than being shocked and offended by them — and Poppy Seed Street Lesson #2: Racism for Fun and Profit basically took every foul racist and sexist slur on the books and overused them to the point of inanity — thus making them ridiculous. Believe it or not, doing that was so controversial that this segment was actually banned even from KOWA’s air for fear of triggering people — and then I did a whole Thunderbolt piece just on that issue as well. (The vote was 7-1 against airing it — and I was the lone ‘yes’ vote, and my view was hardly objective on that particular subject — and so I bowed to their collective wisdom and Poppy Seed Street Lesson #2: Racism for Fun and Profit has never been broadcast over the airwaves.)
This link should take you there — though if not then contact me and I will send you a link to a downloadable MP3 file: http://radio4all.net/index.php/program/85020
However, Poppy Seed Street Lesson #2: Racism for Fun and Profit was centered on defanging racist and sexist words, which are not technically illegal to say as far as I know.
Certain words that are centered on sex and/or excretory functions, on the other hand, are most definitely illegal to say.
One of many ridiculous ironies contained in this is that in order to make their law that says that you can’t say these words they can’t themselves say the words that it is now illegal to say, so they must resort to ambiguous weasel words such as ‘indecency’ or ‘obscenity’ and ‘I know it when I see it’.
This was not only grown men and women saying this crap, these were men and women who were supposed to be the leading judicial minds of their time.
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There seem to be two types of push back against this paradigm; some people use incredibly foul profanity throughout their normal daily speech to the point where the words become nearly meaningless — and thus the words lose their power.
On the other hand, though, I feel that the ability to shock and offend can be a tool, and I feel that this tool is even further enhanced if one saves it for very special occasions. If you rarely use profanity, then it is that much more shocking when you do — and since I often consciously attempt to shock and offend people into action, I have found that a little judicious deployment of a little profanity here and there can sometimes assist in that endeavour.
Alas — I must save it for my newsletter, though, because when it comes to the radio show the FCC has numerous idiotic rules and regulations concerning ‘profanity’, ‘indecency’, and ‘obscenity’ and they take these rules and regulations very seriously. There are, of course, George Carlin’s Seven Dirty Words: Fuck, shit, piss, motherfucker, cocksucker, cunt, and tit. (‘Tit’? Really?) I cannot say these words on the radio without risking a fine that would bankrupt either of the licensed stations that currently air my show. (Free Radio Olympia has other concerns — but at least they don’t have that particular one.)
I used to think I was safe on my radio show by saying ‘shite’ rather than shit, or ‘futher mucker’ rather than mother fucker — but in the class that I am currently attending out at TESC I have learned that there is also an ‘indecent’ language clause to the FCC regulations wherein even alluding to such words is uncool “if it is understandable and clearly capable of a specific sexual or excretory meaning which, in context, is inescapable.” A station in Florida was fined $10,000, for instance, for airing a bit called “Butch Beer,” which, in the Commission’s view, contained an “unambiguous… lesbian theme.”
Wow. Shocking.
I have also learned that the Thunderbolt’s humorous or ironic intent is not a defense either. The Commission has emphasized that the broadcaster’s intent is irrelevant. The only issue is whether the material is or is not ‘indecent’.
Here, in fact, is a list of FCC maximum fines for various infractions:
Failure to air legal ID.......................................................................$2,500
Violation of contest rules ...............................................................$4,000
Broadcast Telephone Conversation without consent of caller…....$5,000
Did a commercial on a noncommercial station..............................$6,000
Deficiencies in Public File................................................................$7,500
Did not do EAS test ......................................................................$12,500
Violate Political Rules ...................................................................$12,500
Hindering an Inspection................................................................$18,500
Broadcast fraudulent EAS test .....................................................$20,000
Broadcast indecency/obscenity ................................................$325,026
Their priorities seem crystal clear.
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Dark Universe
My whole life has almost seemed like an outlined course on learning how many things there are that I don’t know. The more I learn, in fact, the more I learn how much there is that I do not know.
Probably the mind-blowingest fact of which I have ever become aware is a fact that hardly anyone seems to know about and that hardly anyone seems to give proper weight to even if they do know about it.
Consider: Everything in the universe that we can see or detect — all of the stars and all of those billions of galaxies and all of those quasars and supernovas and all of the other wonders out there that our tech has revealed to us — all of that combined makes up less than 4.9% of the mass of our universe.
The other 95.1% is almost utterly invisible to us. We can’t see it. Not only that, but we can’t touch it or hear it or taste it or smell it. Dark matter and dark energy does not interact with light or with normal ‘matter’ as we know it and thus it is almost completely impossible to even detect it much less study it — and in fact the only reason that we can even speculate that it is there at all is because it does have gravity and dark matter’s gravity does interact with the portion of the universe that we can see smell hear taste and feel — and thus we can detect what they’re pretty sure is dark matter an dark energy — though it needs to be noted that the existence of dark matter and dark energy is still technically considered to be a theory because since dark matter and dark energy are invisible to us and except for their gravity and since dark matter and dark energy it otherwise undetectable — the existence of dark matter and dark energy is thus hard to quantify.
That means that we don’t even know what the vast bulk of our universe is, what it does, what its properties are, or what it is capable of doing.
We’re not even sure that it exists.
This means that humanity knows jack all.
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Sometimes I think that humanity gets too big for its britches.
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It’s time to get to work…
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The Olympia Action Alert
Week of August 10th thru August 17th, 2017
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1) FYI Section:
1A) Update from West Central Park Project
This message came from Alicia:
Yes, our regular Sunday Work session will be in full swing this Sunday from 10-2, so grab a pair of work gloves and head out the door before it gets too hot! We'll be tidying up and watering and making everything look beauteous!
Then on Monday night, check out our Monday Movie this week with the favorite rendition of Peter Pan, the movie 'Hook'! This cool remake of an old classic will have you enthralled as Dustin Hoffman portrays a perfectly evil Hook and Robin Williams an enchanting Peter Pan. Bring your blankies and lawn chairs and get ready to snuggle in for a fun community evening . There will be hot popcorn and hot tea sold to benefit the Park. Don't miss out!
On Tuesday, come on out in the afternoon from 4-7 and get a basket full of fresh market gooodness with the latest installment of the West Olympia Farmers' Market. Wishing Willow Farm, Skokomish Valley Farm, Ellis Creek Farm, Charm of Finches Bakery, Rawkstar Creations , Ava's Nest, Inland Empire Salsa, Tasteful Joy and Flowerplay are only some of the vendors who will be there on Tuesday for your shopping health and pleasure!
And finally, the West Central Park started a crowd source campaign this week called the WCP Summer Concert Fund. The Fund has been created for the sole goal of raising funds to put on free concerts in the Park! The Park has been lucky to have been able to present free concerts like Luna Melt and Tony Furtado, The Hinges, The Lemmings, Mudcat and Evan and many more over the past several years and we want to be able to keep on doing that! Would you like to see one more summer concert this year? Well the WCP Summer Concert Fund is on its way to bringing you just that with having raised over a fifth of its goal in one day! Help us make it happen Olympia. Follow the link below to support free music at West Central Park!
https://www.gofundme.com/7fcsjw-wcp-summer-concert-fund
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1B) Update from Just Housing
This message came from Tye:
Don't forget to join us for our 2 weekly events!
1. Monday general meeting from 3pm-5pm at United Churches (110 11th Ave SE, Olympia). This meeting is a great way to get plugged-in, learn more details about Just Housing updates, and to be a part of planning for upcoming events, actions, and community organizing. This week we'll be focusing on:
· Last week's meeting with Mayor Cheryl Selby, City Manager Steve Hall, and Council Member Nathaniel Jones
· Strategy planning- after meeting with the city, where should we go?
· Planning for Tuesday night (8/8/17) camp-in @ City Hall
· Dignity Sit-In court updates and decisions
· Update and planning for Survival Ban Ordinance Committee (proposal and first meeting on 08/13)
· Update on progress working with the National Law Center on Poverty and Homelessness, related to our city's survival ban ordinances
2. Camp-in to Legalize Survival Tuesday 6pm at City Hall. Join us for another night of open mic, community organizing, and community building! We will also be accepting donations of survival supplies to distribute to our neighbors and organizers at this weekly event!
For those of you who will not be able to make it to either of our weekly events, here's a quick update on our meeting with city officials last Thursday:
· It seems clear that our city council is not currently interested in focusing on reforming or repealing our city's survival ban ordinances. Though Nathaniel Jones expressed an interest in re-looking at the ordinances, he doesn't see it as a priority compared to other solutions in progress. Mayor Selby and Steve Hall held firm that they believe removing the ordinances is not worth focusing on- distraction from "real solutions", belief that removing them would do nothing to help the challenges of houselessness in our community, not enough public support, liability concerns, etc.
· Little to no interest from Steve Hall or Mayor Selby in supporting or working towards creating the Survival Ban Ordinance Committee proposed by our unsheltered organizers
· There is interest in amending our city's tent city ordinance. Right now the ordinance allows for 1 encampment for up to 40 people and must be hosted by religious organizations. We will be meeting again to discuss changes that would allow for more encampments and for non-profits (not just religious organizations) to host them. This is good news. However, to make even 1 tent city happen, we need to find non-profits or churches that are willing to host and be responsible for the encampment. Just Housing cannot take responsibility for the encampment without becoming a non-profit. This is a challenge, which we discussed at length with them, mostly due to the simple fact that our non-profit and church communities are already spread extremely thin.
· There is interest in looking at "safe lots", where people living in RVs and other vehicles would be able to park and sleep.
The feeling among all of us after the meeting was of frustration and discouragement. Frustration that after almost a year of advocating for Legalizing Survival, the voice and needs of the people are still not being truly heard or prioritized. Frustration that the majority of the council still just does not seem to get it- what we are asking for and why we are saying it is important and necessary is just not clicking. Discouragement, that it is seeming to be more and more likely that in order to Legalize Survival in our community we will have to work around our city leaders, rather than with them.
In our first meeting with Nathanial Jones, he said to us. "One thing I do trust with you all is that you are genuine. That even if we (the council) fails you, or you see us as failing you, you are not going to go away and that is not going to stop you from doing what you think needs to be done." And he's right.
We have always believed that we do not need permission to survive. We have also always believed in relying more on the strength and compassion of our larger community rather than relying on the leadership and actions of city officials and governing bodies. We know that many in our community want to see the changes that we have been advocating for and that they too, genuinely care. We know that what we are fighting for is right.
These are the things that, as always,keep us pushing forward. Together, our community can and will find a way to make sure that everyone is guaranteed the safety, shelter, security, and basic human rights that we all deserve.
Love and solidarity,
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1C) Net Neutrality Under Attack
Generally I consider talking to politicians to be nearly as pointless as listening to them talk to you. However, if you don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars to give them yet you still wish to influence some politician — then here are the most effective ways in descending order of effectiveness:
A: A personal face-to-face visit in their office.
B: A phone call to their office.
C: A hand written letter.
D: An email.
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Since a personal face-to-face visit to their office usually requires a journey to Washington DC, the most effective method available to most people is a phone call to their office. They do log all of these calls and a lot of calls on any given subject will definitely wield some influence over said politician’s decisions — and occasionally something comes along the pike that I think warrants such a call.
This came from Fight for the Future:
While the FCC is rushing to dismantle the strong net neutrality protections that many of us fought for, members of Congress who take big money from companies like Comcast and Verizon are now trying to strike a backroom deal to pass legislation that will ensure net neutrality is gone for good.[1]
Stopping this plan in Congress is the most important thing we can do right now to keep the Internet free from censorship. We need to make sure that EVERY single Senator and Representative is hearing from their constituents about this while they are home for August recess.
If you sign-up right now, we’ll get in touch with you to help you set up the meeting and even recruit others from your district to join you!
You can go anytime their office is open during the month of August and speak to whoever is there. Let your member of Congress or their staff know why net neutrality is important to you and why the FCC’s plan would destroy the internet as we know it.
It’s hard to overstate the impact of these meetings. If enough of them happen, we could stop Team Cable’s plan to dismantle net neutrality in its tracks. If not enough people step up, lawmakers will assume people don’t care, and we could lose the free and Internet forever.
We already have over 200 events in congressional districts across the country, but to protect strong net neutrality rules, we need to make sure every Congressional office hears from us about why gutting Internet freedom, especially right now, is the wrong thing to do.
Big Cable is banking on us not being able to get to Congress before they can, we have to prove them wrong.
Sign up now to let us know you can drop by your member of Congress’ office.
Thanks for all that you do,
Laila at FFTF
[1] http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-tech/2017/08/08/pushback-on-warrens-delrahim-hold-221757
Fight for the Future works to protect your rights in the digital age.
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2) Thursday August 10th
Downtown Isthmus Development Meeting
6:30 pm @ Olympia City Hall, 601 4th Ave E
This message came from Chris:
● 6:30 p.m: Public Meeting of the City of Olympia’s Design Review Board regarding the proposed development on the isthmus in downtown Olympia (between Capitol Lake and Puget Sound). Room 207 of Olympia City Hall, 601 Fourth Ave E. No public comment will be heard at this meeting, but the lead planner will accept written comments during or before the meeting:
City of Olympia’s Lead Planner Nicole Floyd at nfl...@ci.olympia.wa.us (ph: 360-570-3768).
Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article158141959.html#storylink=cpy
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3) Thursday August 10th, Saturday August 12th, and Sunday August 13th
Film Screening: All the President’s Men
Various Times @ the Capitol Theater, 206 5th Ave SE
This message came from Chris:
OFS Silver Screenings Presents: ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN
OFS Silver Screenings Presents: ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN
Two green reporters and rivals working for the Washington Post, Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), research the botched 1972 burglary of the Democratic Party Headquarters at the Watergate apartment complex. With the help of a mysterious source, code-named Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook), the two reporters make a connection between the burglars and a White House staffer. Despite dire warnings about their safety, the duo follows the money all the way to the top.
Dir: Alan J. Pakula / 1976 / US / 138 min
“All the President’s Men is a quintessential American movie: It does a lot of things well and makes it all look simple. It works on several levels.” – Joseph Gelmis, Newsday
“It provides the most observant study of working journalists we’re ever likely to see in a feature film.” – Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“As smart and cautionary now as it was in the ’70s.” – Ian Nathan, Empire Magazine
SCREENING: AUGUST 10 at 6:30PM; AUGUST 12 at 4:00PM; AUGUST 13 at 7:30PM
Box office opens 30 mins before showtime.
http://olympiafilmsociety.org/all-the-presidents-men/
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4) Friday August 11th
Dana Lyons In Concert
Indigo Farms on Steamboat Island
This message came through Olympia FOR:
Friday August 11: Dana Lyons performs in NW Olympia
Enjoy his music’s fun and its politics at Indigo Farms off Steamboat Island Road NW from Olympia.
Info about tickets, directions, etc.: www.indigofarmsolympia.com
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5) Thursday August 17th
Race in Film Series: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
6:30 pm @ Olympia Unitarian-Universalist Congregation, 2315 Division St NW
This message came through Olympia FOR:
Thursday August 17: Race in Film Series: “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”
This series on the third Thursday of every month chronicles the full sweep of African American history, from the origins of slavery on the African continent right up to today.
6:30-9:30 pm in the sanctuary of Olympia Unitarian-Universalist Congregation, 2315 Division St. NW; Olympia.
OUUC’s Standing Up to Racism, in collaboration with the Black Alliance of Thurston County and The United Churches of Olympia sponsor this monthly film series exploring race and the depiction of race in popular culture. Enjoy a discussion and refreshments.
It is free and open to everyone.
Info: www.ouuc.org and www.blackalliancethurston.org/courageous-conversations.html
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6) Bonus Tip of the Day:
Shed some light on our dark universe.
Peace.
Dana
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LINKS:
Online PDF version of this week’s Thunderbolt:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nukious5yc3qptd/TB%20170810%20Dark%20Universe.pdf?dl=0
The Thunderbolt radio program archive (new shows posted every Friday morning):
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cwxy9ax2zy2zkr6/AADQNRP_zQnF7nt0QT5OznpFa?dl=0
The Thunderbolt Facebook page (links to the newsletter and radio show, plus show notes for the radio show):
https://www.facebook.com/ThurstonActivists/?fref=ts
