The last two weeks have been... strange. Since the controversial stuff seems to have finally burned out, I'll do what I can to recap the lunacy and the memes. For posterity.

But first...


A few sessions in, I have my tele/surf setup:

• D700, 500mm f/4, polarizer, lenscoat
• Ruggard backpack
• Bespoke monopod
• Board shorts
• Dive booties

Photo by Derrick; an optional but useful piece of photo gear.

So unless you're reading this a decade from now, you know that a bunch of people more or less walked into the capitol building while congress was counting the electoral college votes. I'm not going to be Wikipedia or talk radio, but rather cover the high points.

Prelude

That Atlantic article was pretty spot-on, even predicting the last request that would be made of the VP:

The Trump team would take the position that the constitutional language leaves those questions to the vice president. This means that Pence has the unilateral power to announce his own reelection, and a second term for Trump. Democrats and legal scholars would denounce the self-dealing and point out that Congress filled the gaps in the Twelfth Amendment with the Electoral Count Act, which provides instructions for how to resolve this kind of dispute.

But it didn't predict what would start in the streets.

The blitz

In normal times, the press has exclusive access to events. Whether they're reporting form behind police/FEMA lines, embedded with the military, or on the list for press conferences, traditional journalists get closest to the action. Occasionally a shaky cellphone video on Youtube is the *only* source of video of an event. In this case, journalists reported from outside the capitol building while Twitch carried the amply-streamed invasion in real time.


It didn't take long to notice a distinct difference between the streams from January and the streams from summer; no show of force, no tear gas.


The streams largely showed nonviolence and cosplay. We wouldn't know until later that there was theft, vandalism, and death:

"That was a heavily trained group of militia terrorists that attacked us," said the officer, who has been with the department for more than a decade. "They had radios, we found them, they had two-way communicators and earpieces. They had bear spray. They had flash bangs... They were prepared. They strategically put two IEDs, pipe bombs, in two different locations. These guys were military trained. A lot of them were former military," the officer said, referring to two suspected pipe bombs that were found outside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee. The officer even described coming face-to-face with police officers from across the country in the mob. He said some of them flashed their badges, telling him to let them through, and trying to explain that this was all part of a movement that was supposed to help.

Protestors seemingly walked through barricades and eventually took the chambers of congress. It was bizarre.

Memeing begins

Whether or not democracy was under attack, everyone could agree that capitalism was safe.


Appellation d'origine contrôlée jokes never get old.


Why would Zuck do this?


The capitol violence prompted numerous "this you?"-type retweets.


Yes, there was no shortage of irony in the chat.

Sorting it all out

Somehow 'failing' or 'losing' didn't go over well with the guy they were fighting for.


The false flag accusations came were interestingly made between folks in the same camp.

From Buzzfeed News

Platforms respond

In the process, [Colorado Representative Lauren] Boebert and her cohort have exasperated other lawmakers and Republicans. "There is a trend, in both parties, of members who seem more interested in dunking on folks on social media and appearing on friendly cable networks than doing the work of legislating," said Michael Steel, a Republican strategist and former press secretary for House Speaker John Boehner. "They seem to see public service as more performance art than a battle of policy ideas." In recent days, Boebert and a group of other freshman Republicans, including the QAnon devotee Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, a 25-year-old freshman who claimed he was armed during the Capitol riots, have questioned or outright flouted guidelines meant to protect lawmakers from violence, intruders, or the spread of the coronavirus.

From Yahoo News

It's kind of boring, but all the major social media services issued high-profile bans in response to the event.


After his Twitter ban, the president used his alts...


... and was promptly subjected to satire reaching back to the 90s.


To this day I don't know if this is true.


Even some of 4chan bailed from the sinking ship.

Parlez-vous securite?

Birthed from the Reddit/The_Donald ban, Parler had become the social media platform du jour for organizers and the president's legal team. KO sent me a series of tweets that covered it pretty well:

Holdouts

The drama continued until the inauguration, there remained a belief in the (not-so-)fringe right that Biden being sworn in was *necessary* to bring the harshest of charges against Biden, Pelosi, etc.



Review-by-chat that (*warning*) spoils the premise:

		Tenet was pretty cool, but hard to follow for most of it. Though it seemed like one of the better time travel movies...		Zac
		And it reminded me of that awesome super low budget movie where the dudes invent time travel in their garage
		And I couldn't remember the name of it. But I found it: Primer.
		And I remember it being awesome, but I plan to watch it again this weekend
		That is all. Tenet was weird and interesting but I didn?t feel compelled to watch it again to see how it all fits together
Chris	Yeah very much like Primer.
	Honestly would have been cool if people never timetraveled, just a few objects.
	Still, great action and a cool concept.
		I thought Tenet was weird. I also couldn't follow it. Thankfully I had Beth next to me so I could ask, "what did he say?" And she could respond with "I have no idea what's happening."		Sants
		I think it's weird that you can normally affect objects in reverse
		Unless that object is oxygen.
		Photons are clearly working just fine. Shouldn't they be going the wrong way?
		It was too farfetched for me. If they didn't do the oxygen thing, I would have been okay, because then I could suspend my disbelief with other stuff. But by trying to be all clever with the O2, i couldn't ignore the similar things.
		What I did love, and so did Beth, were the actors.
		I thought they acted - and I guess were directed - fantastic. I really liked the lead. The deepness of the relationship between him and the wife was a bit forced considering his experience as a government agent. Ignoring that, it was great.
Chris	Yeah true, feels like if your at the toppest of the tier of operators you kind of have to be a no joke sociopath.
	It's funny how quickly the film moved, no filler scenes. It almost felt like it could be a 3-4 part miniseries where they *could* put a little filler in to give the audience a second to understand some shit.
		I thought it was funny that The Protagonist never has a name		Zac
		But I rewatched Primer last night...it seemed sooooo slow after watching Tenet.
		It only 80 minutes long and Erin fell asleep 30 minutes in.
		They also need oxygen tanks to travel to the past (which I did not remember). Maybe that was Nolan paying homage?
		Or just straight stealing their idea
		That would be a pretty big homage to a small detail		Sants
		They needed oxygen because they were in a box for so long, right?
		The box is filled with argon gas. So they need it to breathe		Zac
		But still... the plot of Primer is very good at making it seem realistic, even though it is bonkers.
Chris	And when they were in reverse time they needed oxygen.
		Would be cool to have the same realism with the sweet action scenes and real actors
	Uh you already got that
	Austin Powers 2 The Spy Who Shagged Me.
		And the small time machine box with a-list actors?		Sants
		Bill & Ted
	A-list actor.
		I said what I said
Chris	Haha I mean George Carlin counts.
		Keanu is a national treasure.		Zac
		Bill... not so much.

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