more like space

donald trump has shown utter indifference to the possible torture and killing of an american-based journalist jamal khashoggi by saudi arabian security forces acting on the direction of saudi crown prince mohammed bin salman but that's hardly a surprise. he said on the campaign trail that he loved the saudis because they gave him money. he refused to consider placing saudis on his infamous "muslim travel ban" list, despite the fact that saudi arabia is the one country that has been credibly linked to the september 11 terrorist attacks. or that the saudis' particular brand of fundamentalist islam has been described as the root of the extremism espoused by groups like al-qaeda and isis.

trump likes wealthy people and the saudi royals are the blueprint of the type of wealthy people he likes. they spend and live in lavish excess. family members are like catnip for the international celebrity press, even if the news media [like khashoggi] are perceived as enemies of the …

i haven't posted about the whole u.s. supreme court thing. it's not that i haven't been following it. it's not because i don't have feelings about it. if anything, i have the opposite problem: i have too many feelings about it. i'm normally a pretty icy viewer of news. between dom and me, he's the one who's more sensitive to what happens to other people. i just tend to be focused on what needs to change. or i get angry. and i am angry about what's been going on in the last weeks. but it's not the usual spitting vitriol in the face of the conservative old guard kind of anger. this anger eats away at me like a cancer because it makes me feel hopeless.

many years ago, i thought the idea of "privilege" being accorded to certain groups was a crock. that was because i misinterpreted it as meaning that white people, or men, or straight people, or cisgendered people could never have it as bad as their marginalized counterparts. what it really …

a little while back, i took the plunge and had one of those "submit your spit" tests done by 23 and me. in retrospect, i probably should have gone the ancestry.com route, since i'm primarily interested in my genealogy and they have the largest database for that. however, i did get some genealogical information as well as some interesting health/ physical information, so it's not like it was a waste of time. [plus, as the genealogical database gets more robust, your file is updated with whatever new information they can glean.] i'm still thinking of taking the ancestry test, just to see how they compare, and because there are a few points that i'd like to investigate more.

[side note :: i'm well aware of the issues that have been raised with these testing services. to the criticism that they are misleading, i don't believe that they are. the crucial part is that you have to read the fine print. i found that the 23 and me people do a very good job of e…