IT BEEPS! YAY!

so, i had the cables connected wrong. derp.

not my fault, though! the manual was wrong!

it's flashing right now, i'll know in a few minutes...

it's telling me it can't identify the bios chip, but that doesn't really add up.

well, the device seems to work. but this isn't designed to run on windows, really, and i'm going to have to boot to linux to even begin to troubleshoot it.

bus pirate came in today. just about to unpack it...

well, i was going to say that this is evidence that the russians don't control the crowds.

that they're driving shit behind the scenes is totally fucking obvious.

....just like it was totally fucking obvious that western forces were running things in kiev.

i still can't fathom an actual invasion. and i still think they're wasting precious time. who controls a few factories in the east of ukraine isn't going to matter once those missiles are hovering over moscow.

conversely, if the americans are being smart about this, what they're doing right now is negotiating base rights in the baltics. and, indeed, where's mccain been over the last few days?

it's exciting footage and everything, and it's provocative to consider, but it's symptomatic of the horrifically shitty military tactics that have plagued the russians since....

....since stalin killed everybody that could have posed any threat to him, and centuries worth of russian military genius along with them.

they had me for a minute, they really did. i was thinking russian resurgence. but, this fool's errand is perhaps moscow's last hurrah, on the pivot of a historic shift in dominance in the slavic speaking world to nato-backed warsaw.

put bluntly: this is exactly what the americans wanted.

"imperial treachery!"

but it only works over and over, for thousands of years now, because the barbarians are idiots.

this could be byzantium tricking the bulgars into getting attacked from behind for the twenty-third (who is really counting?) time. are they *ever* going to figure it out? or is this worked into the unfolding of history?

second time as farce, ok. but this is more like being stuck on the wheel. egads....

i like the rant, here.

for the other guy's point, sure. it could be said that relying on technology to solve the problem is faith-based thinking, and consequently unscientific.

well, it's nice to see the communists expose themselves. hudson isn't particularly surprising.

on the one hand, though, it's also interesting to see all of this dormant cold war programming reassert itself. i don't think many people under 40 are going to react well to the idea of turning russia back into an enemy, especially with the experience we've had with our own government. but, the older generation seems to be booting right up to the command prompt, and launching right into those old flight simulators and vintage copies of sid meier's civilization...

so, we must ask: wolfenstein v. duke nukem?

(actually, it's not even worth asking. duke nukem was fun for ten minutes. wolfenstein was addictive.)

so, communist or not, he seems to be being activated the way he was programmed to be. this is really intriguing to me.

on the other hand, he does make some good points. if you can get through the pynchonesque cartoonism, it's worth watching as a summary of recent events, including the tying of some loose threads.

but, he's still not talking about that missile shield...