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The president-elect stumbles over the protocols of geopolitics and war, tweeting all the way.

It’s not just insane. It’s awkward.

“Since 1979,” the Guardian points out, “the U.S. has acknowledged Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is part of China, with relations governed by the ‘One China’ set of protocols.”

On the day that you read this article, 200 species of life on Earth (plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects, reptiles) will cease to exist. Tomorrow, another 200 species will vanish forever.

The human onslaught to destroy life on Earth is unprecedented in Earth's history. Planet Earth is now experiencing its sixth mass extinction event and Homo sapiens sapiens is the cause. Moreover, this mass extinction event is accelerating and is so comprehensive in its impact that the piecemeal measures being taken by the United Nations, international agencies and governments constitute a tokenism that is breathtaking in the extreme.

And it is no longer the case that mainly 'invisible' species are vanishing: those insects, amphibians and small animals about which you had never even heard, assuming they have been identified and given a name by humans.

When she was a senior at Worthington Kilbourne High School, Lydia DeWeese wasn’t sure she had what it takes to play volleyball at the Division I collegiate level. This season, the middle blocker for the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay proved she did.

As of Nov. 26, the 6-foot-2 junior was ranked second nationally in blocks with 115 and fourth in blocks per set (1.63) for the Phoenix, which finished with a 21-9 record this season. Not too shabby for a player who worried she might get lost in the recruiting shuffle.

“I really didn’t even plan on playing college volleyball until I was a junior in high school,” said DeWeese, who led the Horizon League in blocks and hitting percentage this season. “I didn’t play on any national teams, which is what you have to do to be discovered by a Division I school.

In a better timeline, I’d be writing this month about local comic and toy shops, or the new Pokémon games, or the diversity of Overwatch. It wouldn’t be a perfect timeline, there would still be a need to stay awake about the geek side of pop culture, but it wouldn’t be… this.

But here we are, in the darkest timeline, facing down Nazis not in a game but in our own country. It’s time to talk data hygiene again.

The basics: Turn off geotagging on anything that doesn’t absolutely need it. Turn it off on your phone’s camera. Turn it off on Twitter. Turn it off on Facebook. While we’re at it, for the love of Loki, uninstall Facebook from your phone and change your name there to a pseudonym. Don’t store anything in Dropbox that you wouldn’t want Condoleezza Rice to read. And cover your laptop’s camera.

Okay, now what?

Pearl Harbor Day today is like Columbus Day 50 years ago. That is to say: most people still believe the hype. The myths are still maintained in their blissful unquestioned state. "New Pearl Harbors" are longed for by war makers, claimed, and exploited. Yet the original Pearl Harbor remains the most popular U.S. argument for all things military, including the long-delayed remilitarization of Japan -- not to mention the WWII internment of Japanese Americans as a model for targeting other groups today. Believers in Pearl Harbor imagine for their mythical event, in contrast to today, a greater U.S. innocence, a purer victimhood, a higher contrast of good and evil, and a total necessity of defensive war making.

The national religion of the United States of America is nationalism. Its god is the flag. Its prayer is the pledge of allegiance.

The flag's powers include those of life and death, powers formerly possessed by traditional religions. Its myths are built around the sacrifice of lives to protect against the evils outside the nation. Its heroes are soldiers who make such sacrifices based on unquestioning faith. A "Dream Act" that would give citizenship to those immigrants who kill or die for the flag embodies the deepest dreams of flag worship. Its high priest is the Commander in Chief. Its slaughter of infidels is not protection of a nation otherwise engaged, but an act that in itself completely constitutes the nation as it is understood by its devotees. If the nation stopped killing it would cease to be.

What happens to myths like these when we discover that flying killer robots make better soldiers than soldiers do? Or when we learn that the president is using those flying robots to kill U.S. citizens? Which beliefs do we jettison to reduce the dissonance in our troubled brains?

onald Trump says there were 3 million fraudulent voters in a “rigged” election he lost by more than 2 million popular votes.

But he has no proof.

The solution is obvious: He should fund a 50-state recount.

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