A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction.
On January 8, 2023, thousands of supporters of Brazil’s right-wing former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed federal buildings in the country’s capital. Their goal? Overthrow the results of an election they claimed was rigged, despite no credible evidence of fraud.
If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Brazil’s January 8 looked a lot like the January 6 attack on the US capital, just two years earlier: mob violence, an insurrection, and a defeated leader who refused to concede.
But the aftermath could not be more different. Jair Bolsonaro is now serving a 27-year prison sentence, while Donald Trump is president, again.
So how did two democracies, facing similar threats, end up with such different outcomes? This video explains how Brazil’s democratic system worked to hold “the Trump of the Tropics” accountable and what the US could learn from the aftermath.
Laws and constitutions don't enforce themselves; people have to enforce them. That happened in Brazil. It's not happening, not enough yet, here in the U.S. Time to recycle what I wrote in A meme and a song for Trump's sentencing.
Like Donald Trump's whitewashing and inversion of the attack on the Capitol, the new Big Lie, enough people bought it that Trump got re-elected and he avoided any actual punishment. That jammed "the wheels of justice," dashing my hope that I repeated most recently in Colbert and Kimmel examine Jack Smith's filing: "'The wheels of justice are grinding slowly in this case, but I expect they will indeed grind exceedingly fine.' May they also grind exceedingly fine for Trump and his seditious supporters, if not as slowly." Trump escaped before the wheels finished their work. Sigh.
Unless something extraordinary happens, like the 25th Amendment successfully being invoked, our next opportunity will be the midterm elections in November and a new Congress in January. May we and our democracy survive that long.
Happy Easter and First Contact Day! No one responded at all, let alone no, to my parting question, "Star Trek Easter eggs, anyone?" I'm taking that as a tacit yes for the topic of today's Sunday entertainment feature.
Dr. Kovich's office in Star Trek: Discovery is full of Easter eggs referencing the entire franchise of Star Trek. From a vintage bottle of Chateau Picard wine and Geordi's VISOR, Dr. Kovich's office reveals a lot about his mysterious role in Star Trek: Discovery.
Those are the serious Easter eggs in a dramatic series. Now for some funny ones in a comedy, Star Trek: Lower Decks. Watch as Rodenberry BEAM asks Can You Spot These Hidden Star Trek Jokes?
Every episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks is FULL of easter eggs, references, and inside jokes about the franchise... but did you catch them all? It's time to rank some of our favorite inside jokes from STLD, especially from season 4... from the most obvious to the most obscure.
Those are some deep cuts! The writers of Star Trek: Lower Decks were willing to go a long way for a laugh.
In this video, I dive deep into the 32nd-century Academy to find every callback to the Delta Quadrant. From the return of Robert Picardo as the EMH Doctor to the long-awaited promotion of Admiral Harry Kim, Starfleet Academy is full of Star Trek: Voyager lore. We also look at hidden references to Janeway, Neelix’s lung maggots, and the legal legacy of the 'Author, Author' court case.
That was worth watching, even though I'm not optimistic about The Sci-Fi Feminist uploading a part two. My wife and I enjoyed Starfleet Academy, but it was canceled after season two. Darn.
Follow over the jump for a retrospective of the most read entries about holidays from the back catalog during the 15th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.
Fossilized poop might seem gross, but coprolites give us critical information about how animals lived millions of years ago.
Hosted by: Reid Reimers (he/him)
That was a fascinating survey of the information derived from coprolites, once I can recommend to my students, although I'm not going to show it to them. Just the same, welcome to blogging as professional development.
Since the SciShow video overlaps with a Howtown video I featured, follow over the jump for the most read entries containing content from Howtown last year.
I've only celebrated Passover once before on this blog, Shortest lunar eclipse in a century on Passover eleven years ago, so I decided to observe it again by turning it into one of my drum corps holidays by featuring one of the most famous renditions of the theme to The Ten Commandments on a football field.
Follow over the jump for the rest of the most read holiday entries posted during the 15th year of this blog in lieu of my usual drink recipe.
Is the Supreme Court considering a radical reinterpretation of the 14th amendment?
President Donald Trump has been on a crusade to end birthright citizenship for years. Challenging the long-held legal consensus that anyone born in the United States is granted citizenship, he signed an executive order stripping that right away from the children of undocumented parents and temporary visa holders.
The executive order after returning to the White House set in motion a series of lawsuits challenging Trump’s ability to make sweeping changes to birthright citizenship. And now it’s headed to the Supreme Court in a case called Trump v. Barbara.
The 14th Amendment was passed to guarantee citizenship to freed enslaved people and their children, but was later clarified to apply to anybody born on US soil with a few very specific exceptions. For well over 100 years, birthright citizenship has been enshrined in the Constitution with that understanding.
In Trump v. Barbara, the Trump administration claims that the law applies to those who are not just born in the United States but also “owe allegiance” to it — except…the words “owe allegiance” don’t appear anywhere in the 14th Amendment.
The plaintiffs are representing a group of people affected by Trump’s executive order, and their argument is simple: Leave birthright citizenship alone.
As Vox points out, this is an old debate, one that goes back to the adoption of the 14th Amendment and it always turns out the same way; people born here, other than children of diplomats, residents of American Samoa, and formerly Native Americans — I don't know if we've ever had children of enemy aliens occupying American soil other than Japanese in the Philippines, and I don't know if the Filipinos were American citizens back then — are citizens.
That's what Vox expects will happen again, at least this time.
On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, a cornerstone of immigration policy enshrined in the 14th Amendment and affirmed by the Supreme Court more than 100 years ago. But now the justices are reexamining the policy. Ali Rogin discussed the legal debate with Amy Howe and Amanda Frost.
PBS NewsHour featured five Justices who expressed skepticism of the government's argument, Gorsuch, Cavanaugh, Barrett, Roberts and Jackson, enough to overturn Donald "Hoover Harding Cleveland" Trump's executive order. Add in Kagen and Sotomayor, and that's seven votes. Alito might go along with Hoover Harding Cleveland, but I don't know about Thomas; he could go either way, not that it will matter. Hoover Harding Cleveland will lose and birthright citizenship will win.
Some Supreme Cout justices -- including key conservatives -- seem skeptical about the Trump administration's argument for ending birthright citizenship. And in a presidential first, Trump attended the beginning of the proceedings. Afterwards he posted that the U.S. was "stupid" for allowing birthright citizenship. Hayes Brown, Basil Smikle, Ron Insana and Melissa Murray.
That was worth including for the Mean Girls reference alone.
I'm looking forward to the decision later this year. In the meantime, stay tuned for another retrospective about holidays tomorrow.
You've heard of fake purses, and fake food, and fake concert tickets. But fake fossils? Turns out forging evidence of life in the ancient past isn't as uncommon as you might think. From another work by the infamous forger of the Piltdown Man to the carved footprints that fueled a conspiracy theory, here are seven of the weirdest fossil forgeries of all time.
Hosted by: Savannah Geary (they/them)
I knew about Piltdown Man, which is why I blogged about it twice, now a third time, but I had forgotten about Charles Dawson's other fossil forgery, the toad in the hole, which seems lazy in comparison. I hadn't heard about some of the others, particularly the augmented cheetah. Too bad — Acinonyx kurteni was a good name that is now invalid.
That completes the celebration of today's holiday. Follow over the jump for some of the most read holiday posts during the 15th year of Crazy Eddie's Motie News.