TomRoche

[The link in the first paragraph below may not show dlm's comment, to which this is a response, but merely open an On The Media article. If so, click the "show comments" button/link on the OTM page opened by the following link.]

[@dlm from United States][0]: 'While Obama focuses on semantics Islamic terrorists continue to increase the amount of territory they control.'

"dlm" repeats the US corporate-funded media's line: [Da'ish][1](1) "is taking over" eastern Syria and western Iraq. But this is nonsense, and we know it to be nonsense, because we've seen this movie before:

Cast your mind back to the mindless media of 2005: OMG, ["Al Qaeda in Iraq"][2] is taking over [al-Anbar][3]! Yet even then, thoughtful people noted that AQI's membership numbered, at best, a few thousand. How could a group that small "control" tens of thousands of square miles of territory, and keep US troops in their bases? The answer was, they couldn't. The group that had actually risen up against the US, its lackeys, and t

TomRoche

// Use Gists to store code you would like to remember later on
console.log(window); // log the "window" object to the console

TomRoche

Radio 3 has a program called "The Essay" with RSS feed (which I mostly use) @

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio3/essay/rss.xml

and podcast page @

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/essay

Currently, for episode title=

TomRoche

How 'bout red/black relations in US history, aka the history of interactions between African- and Native Americans? Arica Coleman's "That the Blood Stay Pure" (about a state of great interest to the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities :-) is a recent (and listenable) work directly on this topic. Jace Weaver's "The Red Atlantic" is more "red-focused," but introduced me to red/black figures like Paul Cuffee (about whom I had not heard--nor did I know that Crispus Attucks was mixed-race).

TomRoche

Great/notable wills in US history? What I mean, why I pitch:

Just got done listening to an [excellent interview][1] (highly recommended to my fellow BS fans!) of your co-Virginian [Melvin Ely][2] about his book [Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s Through the Civil War][3]. Its focus is a community founded by blacks not only freed but given land by the will of Richard Randolph (previously discussed in the [BS scandal show][4]) in central VA's Prince Edward County. Among many other things, Ely stresses (IMHO, successfully) that court records are excellent primary sources on ante-bellum race relations; one of several reasons is how white wills (such as Randolph's and George Washington's) dispose of their human property.

So I'm thinking, US history is (to coin a phrase :-) "chock full o' nuts," and they all die, so there have gotta be lotsa interesting/significant "last wills and testaments." Better yet, they're often litigated, which generates yet more documents,

TomRoche

Secrecy in US history. I realize there is already a BS tag=secrecy, but, as is historically so often the case with classification, the one show with that tag is much more about privacy and surveillance. What I mean by "secrecy in US history" (and which I'm pitching) is more like what Matthew Connelly is discussing in his current series of LSE lectures: how the US government has sought (and not) to keep secrets. Connelly's recent second talk (audio here, [metadata here][6]) is particularly àpropos on this topic, and (IMHO) of interest. E.g., I had no idea [Jefferson was a cryptographer][7]! But I guess being a slavemaster greatly increases one's spare time ...

TomRoche

#!/usr/bin/env bash

### A fairly minimal, reasonably secure foundation for whatever you might be doing on a debian-based linode.
### Mostly this just automates
### 1. https://www.linode.com/docs/getting-started/
### 2. https://www.linode.com/docs/security/securing-your-server/

### This StackScript assumes you have previously (on the linode website) created a working linode with known

### * IP# (needed below)

TomRoche

#!/bin/bash

### A fairly minimal, reasonably secure foundation for whatever you might be doing on a debian-based linode.
### Mostly this just automates
### 1. https://www.linode.com/docs/getting-started/
### 2. https://www.linode.com/docs/security/securing-your-server/

### This StackScript assumes you have previously (on the linode website) created a working linode with known

### * IP# (needed below)