Ken on 2022-10-22
Ken Cheetham is an animal on a planet. Ken's main obsession currently is CheeLinks, an extensive network of links to web pages on crucial topics that may become more important as human folly proceeds unabated. So please check out CheeLinks and try its Search facility to see what Ken has curated on topics of interest to you.
Ken maintains A San Francisco Bay Area Progressive Directory and is the author of some random cruft.
email: flarnbird@gmail.com
Trump and Musk are acting like they've read a few books on how people become autocrats, and now they're frantically trying every trick on the list, all at once to overwhelm us. See my links under Donald Trump's Authoritarianism and Autocracy.
I can appreciate Elon Musk's determination to minimize wasteful government spending, because I do the same thing by working to minimize MY spending. For example, I don't have an automobile because I get along fine without one. Elon would be proud of me.
Photos of Tesla Takedown events in the San Francisco Bay Area
2025-02-17 Tesla showroom in San Francisco on Not My Presidents Day.
2025-03-01 Tesla showroom in Berkeley.
Here are some cult leader lessons from Trump's 2025-03-04 speech to Congress and the world: 1. Keep forcefully repeating the same ludicrous claims over and over with a straight face, where each repetition increases the perceived likelihood that there must be some truth in there. 2. Have an audience of cheerleaders giving you yet another obligatory standing ovation for each ludicrous claim, where the extremeness of that positive reaction by many people lends an air of credibility to the claim. 3. Ridicule anyone who's not a follower yet, to motivate them to end the ridicule by joining. 4. Spotlight teary-eyed sympathetic individuals in the audience who you have allegedly helped, arousing our emotions of support. Emotion makes the whole effect stick better. Zoom in close on their faces to increase the effect. 5. Drag the whole spectacle out for 100 long minutes, wearing down our mental defenses that might otherwise see through all of this. Trump knows exactly what he's doing, and he performs it impressively well.
Video of Some Historic Protests in the Bay Area that We May Want to Emulate
Here's my video of the remarkable Occupy Oakland demonstration that shut down the Port of Oakland on Wednesday, November 2, 2011.
The first part of the video is rather ordinary protest footage, but hang on for the middle part that demonstrates the human microphone (Mic Check!) being used to pass instructions back through the huge crowd, one block at a time. And the end features a splendid drumming & chanting happening back in downtown Oakland.
The following six videos cover some large protest demonstrations in San Francisco and Oakland, California, shortly before and just after the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Parts 1 through 3 are planned permitted marches before the invasion, while parts 4 through 6 are impromptu protest just after the invasion, on Friday and Saturday, March 21 and 22, 2003. Part 4 covers a mass arrest for walking in the street without a permit. Parts 5 and 6 feature interesting interplay with police attempting to keep the protesters out of the streets. This is raw video heavily edited down into short clips to keep it moving along. The footage focuses on drumming and other music in the streets.
For busy people, here are super-compressed versions (about 48 seconds each):
Parts 1 & 2 (2003-02-15, pre-invasion)
View on YouTube
or Download for keeps (36 mb)
Parts 5 & 6 (2003-03-21, post-invasion)
View on YouTube
or Download for keeps (39 mb)
And here are the full-length versions (about 55 minutes total):
Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OskTW3VPlT4
Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkhfdxWyqsA
Part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQFTOhXv7HE
Part 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs7uqK6Vg2k
Part 5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKrKXb2zPzs
Part 6 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8M7ifYEm4c
Music Here are a few songs of mine. Click a song name in the list below to play it.
The first two are newer recordings of very old songs. The other three are older recordings of less old songs, with somewhat lower-quality mixes.
Under
is a straight-ahead fun funky number.
Fnoo
is a jazzy classicalish work in a fast three.
Boof
is rude on the outside but somewhat mellow in the middle.
Wake Up
is a song for waking up to gradually in the morning.
Urnk
is hard-hitting and then spacy.
Under
Download the songs for keeps here:
https://bapd.org/songs/Under.mp3
https://bapd.org/songs/Fnoo.mp3
https://bapd.org/songs/Boof.mp3
https://bapd.org/songs/WakeUp.mp3
https://bapd.org/songs/Urnk.mp3
These recordings are free for any not-for-profit use. The songs and recordings are copyright Ken Cheetham.
For hiking on the edge of Berkeley without needing a car, you may want to check out the open space in Strawberry Canyon, Hamilton Gulch, and Claremont Canyon. Here's my shorter sequence of some favorite photos, a recommended longer sequence, and even a ridiculously complete sequence.
UC Berkeley may still be desiring a major tree cut and ongoing herbicide applications here. Groups opposing this include Conservation Sense and Nonsense, the Hills Conservation Network, the TreeSpirit Project, the Coalition to Defend East Bay Forests, and East Bay Pesticide Alert.
My photos of some of the threatened trees are at bapd.org/treestalk.html. For an outline of arguments against the cuts, see bapd.org/treenotes.html.
Ken is the author of SongSprouter, a fun algorithmic music composition app. It runs on Windows and is free to download.
No matter had badly we wreck the climate, humans will remain driven to use as much energy as possible. Our apparent purpose in life is to increase entropy, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of The Second Law of Thermodynamics. We like to believe in free will, yet we never demonstrate it. See The Jevons Paradox.
The crux of the problem: Everybody wants to be seen as a normal person rather than a weirdo or a loser. But if we continue living the way that has come to be seen as normal, then we are doomed.
I suspect that Trump won again because many people feel a need to see a stern father figure at the top of the government, just as they insist on imagining one at the top of the sky. Persistent fearmongering by politicians and the media (as with religion before) is turning people more authoritarian, where they're running to Big Daddy for protection. We must grow up.
Related to that is how many people claim that God would not allow humans to wreck the climate unless that is part of of his master plan, and so either way there is no need to be concerned about it. That is one of the most dangerous beliefs that humans could have, yet many millions of people insist on it. We must instead face the serious predicament that we have created, and deal with it.
My nutrition hero is Michael Greger MD of nutritionfacts.org, for the studies that he digs up and especially for his cogent perspective on them. Many of the studies that he covers are in my nutrition links.
One product makes you stylish And one product makes you score But the ones that we keep buying Quickly turn into a bore Go ask Darwin Why we thirst for More And if you go chasing status Well you know you're going to fail Cause a cigar-smoking corporate feller Is holding a phantom grail Call Darwin Or send him email When the men in the boardroom Get up and tell you what you need And you've just been watching television And the Joneses look in the lead Go ask Darwin I think he'll know When your genes only want to pass themselves on After you've fallen sloppy dead And they've tricked you into an endless rat race Though like the Red Queen you can't get ahead Remember What your gut once said Ease your dread Ease your dread
For anyone from long ago who is trying to find me, I was born in Beckley, WV (1958), grew up in Dunbar, WV, and got a BS in computer science from West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV. I lived in Mountain View, CA, for a few years, and have lived in Berkeley, CA since 1989. (From Beckley to Berkeley -- straight across to the left 2600 miles.)
It's later than it's ever been!