And, after five years away recovering from The Accident, The Cryptosphere is back! With an exclusive interview with darkweb researcher DarkDotFail on how his site was stolen by hackers in a man-in-the-middle attack. And the attack was thwarted and reversed DURING the interview!
It’s not every day that we conduct an interview which is rudely interrupted by the resolution of the entire premise of the interview, but it does happen occasionally. It happened once when we interviewed a hacktivist who had to hang up because the nurse was taking him to rehab, where he’d been put as a result of his hacking. It happened again yesterday, when we interviewed the primary journalist/researcher behind Dark.fail, a domain which they’d lost control of, and which they regained while in conversation with me. Us. Whatever.
[Hello, Officer Friendly]
Dark.fail is a website that attempts to review the reliability of various darknet sites, many of them drug-related, but many not. It is maintained by a team of fewer than a dozen activists and researchers.
On April 29th, a hacker or hackers seized control of the domain and switched it to point to a dupe of…
Welcome back, Possums. We here at ye olde raincoaster blog are still unclear whether CP Style capitalizes Possums or not, but we’re feeling our collective oats today (and also our coffee, which is beans and thus protein, right? RIGHT?) so we will allow it.
Our briefing bingo today is named after our brief, shattered hope for Universal Basic Income to have been included in the budget presented by Finance Minister and Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland. And also named in accordance with our completely arbitrarily-chosen theme because it’s 2021 and everything is arbitrary. Get a massive mandate from your own party to make Universal Basic Income happen? Guess what doesn’t happen?
we shoulda known, Possums
But I’m over that.
It is definitely, positively not named after the influence mining corporations have on politicians, nope, nosirree Bob, whoever Bob is. He’s your uncle, I guess. Especially if you’re a centrist party looking for donations.
Definitely not named for that. Perish the thought! Because we all know the gold they give to political parties is all too real.
Nobody knows better than this dude.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks while taking part in a ground breaking event at the Iamgold Cote Gold mining site in Gogama, Ont., on Friday, September 11, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
So far in our arbitrarily-chosen-theme-series, we’ve had:
Guesses in the comments section to win fabulous, completely imaginary prizes. And need we even tell you they’re arbitrary? You’ll have guessed it already, you clever Possums. Or possums. Whatever.
Today we have an unexpected bonus for you: a tenth generation bingo card! Yes, we found 24 new pieces of minutiae to hunt out in these very serious and important political briefings.
It’s almost as if bringing an absurdist lens to processes and systems which expect reverence and obedience under the guise of a simple celebrity culture game allows us to question our fundamental roles, responsibilities, and rights within those processes and systems, or even to choose to define ourselves against them.
And we’re doing this from Ottawa.
When they come for me, delete my cookies, wouldja?
Our video is or will be here, and I sincerely hope CPAC got its placeholder shit together because we’d vastly prefer to keep using their videos. Oh lookie, they did. We feel our complaints reached the proper department at last. 124 watching, with five minutes to go [two hours later, only 840 views]:
On Parliament Hill, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discusses the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. He is joined by Dominic LeBlanc (minister of intergovernmental affairs), Anita Anand (minister of public services and procurement), Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, and Dr. Howard Njoo, deputy chief public health officer.Continue reading →
Good rainy morning, Possums. We are coming to you live from Ottawa, although today CPAC is apparently not covering Trudeau’s briefing so we are going with the CBC video instead, as the actual PMO team doesn’t get the video up for eight or ten hours and never includes other people’s speeches or the questions from the media. This should be jarring, and bad for my French, but here goes.
If you want to take a guess at our arbitrary nomenclature convention, we’re still going. One theme unifies all our briefing titles lately and we have had:
Guesses in the comments section to win fabulous, completely imaginary prizes. Our choice today is not completely arbitrary, however, as toadstools and politics could well be more interconnected than most people think. Forget mind control chips in vaccines and fluoride in the water supply: how about dosing the entire population with shrooms to fight fascism? Or at least the Alberta and Ontario legislatures?
Researchers found unlikely heroes in keeping the world from authoritarianism – magic mushrooms. Scientists from the Psychedelic Research Group at Imperial College London showed that psilocybin, the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms, makes people less likely to embrace authoritarian views like fascism and more connected with nature.
The study, authored by Taylor Lyons and Robin L. Carhart-Harris, a leading researcher in this field, shows that psilocybin treatment can lead to lasting changes in such mindsets.
that’s no mushroom
Here’s our CBC video, and I’m wondering about the backstory here. Did he piss off CPAC? Is Their Person sick today? I see they’re covering Question Period but not this. Come, let us overthink it together! [later: CPAC did in fact cover the briefing, although they didn’t have their placeholder in place on YouTube in advance like usual, and it wasn’t there five minutes into the briefing either].
The CBC does not go in for descriptive captions, they only promote their other channels.
And our Bingo cards are here. Play one or play the whole set or play a completely random and arbitrarily chosen subset, because it’s 2021 and arbitrary absurdism is where we are at now in Canadian politics.
Good afternoon, Possums. We were so busy doing taxes this morning that we didn’t even think to cover the Covid briefing. We didn’t even think to check if there was one, although there always is on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Possums, there was. And here it is. Action begins at the 23 minute mark, so right off the bat tick your “Begins more than ten minutes late” square:
On Parliament Hill, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discusses the federal government’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 (coronavirus disease) pandemic. He is joined virtually by federal ministers Dominic LeBlanc (intergovernmental affairs), Anita Anand (procurement) and Bill Blair (public safety), as well as by Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, and Dr. Howard Njoo, deputy chief public health officer. The previous day, the government announced that the Canadian Armed Forces will deploy medical personnel to Ontario, where hospital resources are being taxed by a surge in cases of COVID-19. The deployment of personnel comes following a formal request by the Ontario government.
We are now two days out from the AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab, which I got on Thursday at 8:30am. Last night, I noticed that tap water was tasting different for me, and wondered what that meant. Happy to report it does, in fact and in actuality, mean something.
Something meaningful.
I mean…
I mean…
It means that this:
Shrimp and orange pepper tacos with white peach balsamic dressing
Tasted like this:
Happy breakfast
You know, once I had breakfast sitting one table over from Oprah Winfrey. I was in Santa Barbara for the film festival with some friends, and while I can never afford extravagant dinners when I travel I’ve long since realized it’s much easier to afford extravagant brunches pretty much anywhere, so my friends and I went for one.
Brunch was at the Bacara Resort which is now the Ritz-Carleton Santa Barbara, which is no doubt just as lovely now as it was back in the early 2000’s. Egrets in the herb garden, surfers on the beach, sea air and ocean views and peace and quiet and celebrities in neutral cashmere at the next table hoping to god you don’t bug them. I had, if memory serves (which for once it does because I’m back on the ginko biloba) the shrimp and mango salad and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice. It cost $45 with tip, and it was absolutely worth every penny. It was both the most expensive and the tastiest brunch I’ve ever had.
Until today.
These perfectly ordinary tacos I made for breakfast today tasted better. Frozen shrimp, leftover cut orange peppers, week-old hearts of romaine, WASP-made tortillas, and store brand peach and white balsamic salad dressing, and honestly one of the most intensely pleasurable things I’ve ever put inside me. Why is that?
From what GAVI says about the way the virus interferes with the way salts interact with scent sensors, it seems natural that the metallic/mineral flavours in the water were the first thing I noticed once the vaccine got a good foothold and started kicking viral ass. It took till today for me to notice a difference with the flavour of food, but I really do, and my sense of scent is keener than it’s been in more than a year for certain. Yesterday I put on a sweater I hadn’t worn in a couple of weeks, and I noticed the scent of perfume on it, loved the perfume, and was able to pick it out from my (maybe 18 or 20 bottles) collection.
And man, if I thought breakfast was good, lunch, Possums, lunch was fucking orgasmic.
Behold the most pleasurable single physical experience I have had since March, 2020.
Hey, it’s been A Year, okay?
That is leftover cold chicken on a toasted poppyseed bagel with mustard (the basic bitch kind), mayonnaise, and salt and pepper. And it was orgasmic. And about eight hours later I can still smell the chicken on my fingers, and I’ve washed my hands four times.
That, if I recall, was a bagel too
Before you ask, no, the chicken leftovers weren’t so old they were smelly. And I didn’t put them anywhere interesting with my hands. I’m just an extraordinarily great smeller right now.
Now.
As I mentioned yesterday, it’s possible this is psychosomatic (which is different from Not Real). And I know that the plural of anecdote is not data (even if nobody seems to know who said it first). But anecdotal evidence from medical and scientific professionals I’m in touch with has begun to show a pattern: if you had the virus, and you get the jab, your symptoms are very mild compared to the norm, and you may notice a return of smell and taste. And I’m pretty sure I had Covid-19 back in March of 2020, and possibly again in the fall, when I was sick for four straight months.
And I’m noticing that yes, there are flavours in my mouth even when I’m not eating, which is consistent with a return of long-lost senses.
Basically those flavours are always there; any lover will tell you that you have a particular taste. And the reason we don’t notice these flavours most of the time is, after a certain duration of a particular sensation, our brain goes, “okay, that’s enough,” and shuts down the receptors that are getting that message. It’s like if your ex constantly texts you with unproductive statements, you block the number. If the messages don’t come in for a year, you might unblock the number, and the ex can get through again and because you’ve been free of it for a year it seems THAT MUCH MORE intense.
So that’s what’s going on in my mouth right now.
As for other symptoms/side effects, I feel just fine today. The persistent post-nasal drip that I’ve been complaining about for literally more than a year is gone. GONE, possums. GONE.
My resting heart rate, which is normally between 59-62 beats per minute, spiked to 70 yesterday, but it’s at 69 today and on its way back down, and that might have been a response to the Tylenol and one beer I had. Had a slight headache when I woke up which dissipated over the day, and my jab arm feels a little bit bruised and stiff, but I have quite a burst of energy today. The Sister, who has a biology obviously very similar to my own, is a day farther out from her AZ jab and it hit her very hard. Today her injection site is a large red welt, whereas when I went to photograph mine and share it with her…
I couldn’t find it.
I also have a kind of mental clarity that is new to me, at least recently. Remember, I’m still recovering from a traumatic brain injury four and a half years ago, but I do feel particularly bright today. That’s the exact word, “bright.” Everything is a little lighter, everything is a little less effort, everything sparkles a little bit in comparison to three days ago. If that’s psychosomatic or not, I’ll take it. There’s writing to be done, Possums!
raincoaster 