The Digger

In the Face of Power Outages California Done With HAM Radio Repeater Stations In one of my earlier posting this year I wrote about the how population control in a bronze age society would be conducted by controlling who has access to water.  Likewise anthropologists in the 1970s were comparing this to modern fuel distribution and shortages. It was called flicking the switch. So most of you have heard about the power shut downs in California but what you may not have heard about is that California has dramatically raised fees for operating HAM radio repeat stations. Just at the time when people are losing phone and internet service in the State of California, it is coming for your short wave radios. Where your local power may be out you could still maintain communications with the outside world via a repeater station outside of the black out area. California has a different idea about this. HAM radio repeater stations are owned, maintained and operated by Ham radio ...

  Artists traditionally have faced a choice: stay true to their calling, trading financial security for intellectual freedom—or put art aside in favour of a steady paycheque and the stifling strictures that come with corporate life. But in the current era, something has changed. Artists now experience the worst of both worlds: They still struggle to make ends meet, while enduring all of the oppressive controls that come with selling out. One well-known recent example is that of Anders Carlson-Wee, the poet who denounced his own poem after being shamed by his editors at The Nation . Stephanie Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith had published Carlson-Wee’s poem, titled How-To , in July, but then had second thoughts , suddenly declaring it to be full of racist and ableist wrongthink. The poet, too, felt the need to beg for forgiveness, telling the world, “I am sorry for the pain I caused.” But this is just one piece of a larger trend. There is a concerted effor...

Part 1: High-Tech & the Homeless October 1, 2019 To expatiate on the subject of homelessness in Seattle, Tucker Carlson regularly invites on his Fox News show a Republican liberal who broadcasts out of Seattle. Aside from a pastiche of liberal ideas, Sleepy in Seattle has nothing remotely perceptive or probative to say about homelessness in the Emerald City. Eventually, this young know-nothing will read this Column and parrot it back to Tucker. Then, perhaps, will Carlson’s viewers stop being gulled by Big Tech and the other multinationals who are exacerbating the problem of homelessness in Washington State. For these stateless corporations are the major importers, into King County and the surrounds, of a high-tech, feudal elite that compounds the homeless quagmire. If anything, the corporations who straddle the globe rely on immigration ignoramuses to perpetuate the single-cause theory of homelessness: addiction or mental illness. However, even if drug a...