Remembrance of Futures Past

So, if you're an eligible US citizen, vote on Tuesday. Which is, and will be, a dry run for the next Presidential election. On 05 November 2024.

Remember, remember, the fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot
We see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot

The past of four-century-old English history (wound up in bigotry and based on rewriting history). The past of to-be-four-years-old US history, 06 Jan 2021 (wound up in bigotry and based on rewriting history). Hopefully not the future of US history (wound up in bigotry…). Keep in mind, though, that the soundtrack sneaked in above celebrates a totalitarian regime repelling the attack of another totalitarian regime₀ so I'm not optimistic.

• Nor am I encouraged by the way American entertainment and sport so easily forgets about its own problems (which are all too easily traced to entitled bigotry, just like in other areas of "employment"). I was around at the beginning of Title IX; I was around as women were being slowly, grudgingly, and still-incompletely brought into the officer corps; I've seen this shit before and it rather pisses me off that nobody has learned from it, predicted its recurrence, or taken steps against those who perpetuate it (starting with removing the entire Board of Visitors at all three military academies, or better yet just closing them down on the ground that what they perpetuate is more bad than good).
• Then there are other aspects of "business as usual," like data leaks from data brokers who don't trumpet that they're data brokers. Just remember: Information that you don't give away can't be sold, hacked, consolidated, or otherwise misused. This is a great big hint on the appropriate reaction to birdnoises that Birdpoop should emphasize "verified" accounts…
• …and sometimes you really, really just want them all to lose. Like in spats between misbehaving monopolists. The fundamental question one must ask is how much of the revenue at issue is, will, or might even be contemplated to, end up in the pockets of those actually providing the content that these two misbehaving monopolists in content distribution are profiting from. On the basis of their past conduct and present disclosures to investors, just about as much as my on-pitch contributions at the World Cup starting later this month.
• Distributing the money doesn't get any easier for other aspects of music, either. The particularly delicious bologna being sliced with a microplane here will, no doubt, have some chunks of garlic that catch and attract undue attention. But it's still a link sausage, isn't it? Waiting, perhaps, only for the appearance of the Harry Fox Unfaithful Agency to really confuse things.
• We could also argue about tweaks to fundamentally broken award systems in the arts that constitute an "emergency nose job" for a patient with septic appendicitis and multiple GSWs (mostly self-inflicted). The fundamental blindness of the "entertainment industry press" (echoed in subset the "publishing industry press") to the often-outright-and-overt bigotry embedded in the rules of the "competition," ranging from the "it's too soon to judge" problem to considering a film to be 'murikan if most of its financing and studio sponsorship came from the US, even if every single second of the film was shot overseas (like these Best Picture nominees, none of which concerned 'murika on screen).