Housekeeping
The Irregular Bullshit has been evolving.
When I began the Irregular Bullshit, I was actually archiving articles as private posts here. But the Text Editor and Corrector (TECO) macro and surrounding zsh scripts I used to clean up the hypertext markup language (HTML) were increasingly broken and I was having more and more difficulty fixing it.
I also increasingly began grouping articles together, still as private posts, but as the scripts broke, I eventually gave up and started archiving them in portable document format (PDF), colloquially known as PDFs. And eventually, I began removing the archived HTML, and making lists of Chicago-style footnote references available publicly.
Eventually, I realized that there needed to be organization to all this and began developing a hierarchy, but had not actually logically implemented this hierarchy within WordPress.
I am now biting a bullet and converting a number of “posts” in the Irregular Bullshit to “pages,” logically implementing that hierarchical structure. The very evil downside is that uniform resource locators (URLs) change. This will break a lot of links.
But a problem with the previous arrangement was that dates are attached to posts. As these posts get updated with new articles, the dates become misleading. That’s not okay, particularly where I have introductory text—I’ve been inserting this more often lately—that I might update.
“Posts” in the Gilead category have now all been converted to pages; if you’re having trouble finding one, probably because indeed those URLs have changed, try to find it by going to the Gilead page. Other hierarchies will probably be converted more gradually, in part because doing this is a real pain in the ass.
Gilead
Donald Trump
Coup attempt
Fig. 1. “Jake Angeli (Qanon Shaman), seen holding a Qanon sign at the intersection of Bell Rd and 75th Ave in Peoria, Arizona, on 2020 October 15.” Photography by TheUnseen011101 [pseud.], October 15, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
Americans For Prosperity has decided to oppose Donald Trump in the Republican primary contest and will, they say, decide on whom to support by the end of summer.[1] This is a neoliberal organization, ideologically capitalist libertarian (neoliberalism is what happens when capitalist libertarians come to power), that can influence an awful lot of campaign contributions.
Many evangelical Protestant leaders have reached a similar decision.[2] In terms of money, that pretty much leaves the gun nuts, though it’s hard to imagine they’d be any less happy with, say, Ron DeSantis.
White supremacist gang support may also be diminished by Trump’s attacks on the “deep state,” especially including the Federal Bureau of Investigation;[3] it’s certainly plausible that this accounts for the disappearance of most Trump campaign flags around southwestern Pennsylvania following the Mar-a-Lago search.[4]
Trump nearly unified conservatism as white Christian nationalism.[5] But it is very clearly no longer united behind him.
Isaac Arnsdorf, “Koch network to oppose Trump in primary after sitting out recent cycles,” Washington Post, February 5, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/05/koch-trump-2024-gop-presidential-primary/
Fossil fuels
Northeast (especially Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
Fig. 1. Photographer unknown, circa 1940-1950, from Smoke Control Lantern Slide Collection, ca. 1940-1950, AIS.1978.22, Archives Service Center, University of Pittsburgh., via Bloomberg,[6] fair use.
Jessica Guay, “Two environmental groups file notice of intent to file a lawsuit against Shell cracker plant,” KDKA TV, February 3, 2023, https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/two-environmental-groups-file-notice-of-intent-to-file-a-lawsuit-against-shell-cracker-plant/
- [1]Isaac Arnsdorf, “Koch network to oppose Trump in primary after sitting out recent cycles,” Washington Post, February 5, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/05/koch-trump-2024-gop-presidential-primary/↩
- [2]Caleb Ecarma, “Donald Trump to Evangelicals: You Can’t Break Up With Me Because I’m Breaking Up With You First,” Vanity Fair, January 17, 2023, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/01/donald-trump-evangelicals-break-up↩
- [3]Adam Goldman and Alan Feuer, “Republicans Step Up Attacks on F.B.I. as It Investigates Trump,” New York Times, December 29, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/28/us/politics/fbi-gop-attacks.html; Julia Ioffe, “Defund… the F.B.I.?” Puck, August 9, 2022, https://puck.news/defund-the-f-b-i/↩
- [4]David Benfell, “More questions than answers as Donald Trump flags come down,” Not Housebroken, December 3, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/08/28/more-questions-than-answers-as-donald-trump-flags-come-down/↩
- [5]David Benfell, “My 2024 forecast,” Not Housebroken, November 13, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/03/10/my-2024-forecast/↩
- [6]Mark Byrnes, “What Pittsburgh Looked Like When It Decided It Had a Pollution Problem,” Bloomberg, June 5, 2012, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-06-05/what-pittsburgh-looked-like-when-it-decided-it-had-a-pollution-problem↩