I Make No News

Weather:
It's weather. Maybe the rain was really that bad in California and maybe they're just whiny earthquake-addled Californians and they're not used to having actual, y'know, weather. Either way, as one of Jon Stewart's finer moments reminds us, when life gives them drizzle our glorious media moguls will gladly make disaster-ade out of it. However, for those still on the fence about this whole "reality" thing, it does suggest a fun exercise. Global warming doesn't just mean warming. It's an almost imperceptible process which will more visibly manifest as changes in supposedly stable biodiversity and weather patterns.
So if you'd like to check up on that slew of scientists' conclusion yourself, keep an eye out for that weather that should not be: winter tornadoes, hurricanes in New England, that sort of thing. Climate change is a process too slow for individual human awareness, so by all means help yourself along by being more aware of the stuff which would catch your attention anyway like "I hate having to carry an umbrella." Then look up some actual scientific data to see if your observations hold up.
Hint: Sean Hannity is not a scientician.

U.S. News:
Donald Trump is still an asshat. Big surprise. But oh lordie-loo am I ever glad this schmuck decided to run for president. It's like a bunch of rednecks whispering nigger jokes to each other were suddenly confronted with their drunken uncle in a pointy white hood, dragging a big wooden cross with one hand and waving a can of lighter fluid in the other. Yes, that's you. His Trumpness embodies what's been the American Republican Party since the late '90s at least. You just never wanted to admit it and fuck if it ain't so damn gratifying to see your noses rubbed in it. The social Darwinism, the belligerence, the insanely wasteful greed and petty sadism in treading on the backs of the poor, the backwardness and stupidity and crass ball-grabbing machismo, this was King Bush II and his whole coterie despite their veneer of smarmy WASP-ish respectability. Trump is your pointy white hood, the unvarnished embodiment of your bellicose greed and knuckledragging, your culture-less reactionary stupidity. Wear him proudly.
It could only get better if hell froze over and he actually got elected because he really would make the greatest president this voting public deserves.

International News:
North Korea's nuking everyone again. Well, shit, what else is new? They've been nuking everyone for some generations now. Yes, there's some danger that the boy who keeps crying wolf will actually produce said wolf. As Christopher Hitchens (among many others) noted after his own foray into the demesne of Fat Man and Little Boy (no doubt the latest Kimmy thinks of himself as the Tsar Bomba) North Korea itself would be wiped off the map instantly if it ever dared use its Trump card. However, totalitarian dictators tend away from rationality and yeah, fuckers might just be stupid enough to do it.
Amusingly though, littlest Kim's paranoid ravings about American Imperialism contain a grain of truth. Noam Chomsky may be singlemindedly obsessed with pinning absolutely anything and everything on American Imperialism, but he's got a point. The Pax Americana really is conducting exercises in monopolizing violence with various other militaries 'cuz ... ida know, stuff?
To me it immediately brings to mind a forgotten detail about the World Trade Center bombings, Bush Jr.'s constant statements during that spring, from the time he grabbed the scepter out of Clinton's sticky right hand, that the U.S. would be increasing its already obscene military presence abroad. Say it loud, say it proud, say it all across the world, say it especially to all the delusional cretins who might actually do something symbolic and ineffectual about it, like bomb embassies. Rattle that saber 'til someone gives you a black eye, then start stabbing random people. Media-blitz fundamentalists' predictably violent reaction to build up some flimsy casus belli to scare your own voting public into continuing to pay into your military-industrial money-laundering scheme.
Easy money.
Breathe, people. Kim et co. ain't comin' to getcha. Hell, by all accounts most of them are so underfed they can barely stand under their own strength. Unlike you, my dear American readers, who are so overfed that... you can barely stand under your own strength.

To bring this back to the obviously more relevant first-world problems, I was talking to an EVE-Online player last night who joked that as long as they don't nuke Iceland (CCP being originally an Icelandic company) we'll be okay. Not to spit on his cupcake, I pointed out that EVE's server cluster's actually located in London, a more likely target for terrorism (along with most of CCP's crew and I'm guessing a good chunk of their customer base.) Really, though, the best North Korea can hope for is flattening Seoul, so it's a good thing I'm not playing Lineage 2.
My dog... I just realized something terrible. This could be the end of Starcraft as we know it!
(And also twenty-five million people.)