o o o o o
Donate here to help victims of the Turkey/Syria quake.
It's tough being a snowman.
Eventually the cats got tired of this bullshit.
Syzygy, chatbot, Cylons, and harvesting that isn't.
He's so fashionable.
They struggle to operate unfamiliar technology.
There's such a thing as too slow for lunch.
See juggling from overhead.
Lady M has some spooky valentines.
Unusual balcony concept.
Splash!
We're safe here because it's so dangerous.
Nice visualization here of Nena Kerner's 99 Luftballons song.
Find the owls.
He cleans up after litterbugs.
Hell has pretty decent music, apparently.
A graphic novel recalls life in Beirut during the years of religious war.
Awesome costume.
Quick action saved the puppies.
Ride the cable cars of Iztapalapa, Mexico.
Ancient Greco-Roman statues were painted, but not how you probably think.
Introverts have better brains.
Striking astronomy photos here.
JRR Tolkien now has a frog named after him.
Hackwhackers observes Darwin Day.
Pompeii has a lot to teach us.
Explore space through NASA's Eyes (found via Miss Cellania).
Graphs illustrate a century of profound change.
Stay out of that jacuzzi.
See how many satellites there are.
Some autistic behaviors are harmless.
It's a book for kids.
$9.28 for seventy hours of work.
What kind of man goes around hurting little girls?
An atheist explains why she supports the death penalty (scroll down to Athenawasamerf).
This nutball claims the Turkish earthquake was divine punishment for the Grammy awards. No, really.
Some interesting quotes from Karl Marx here.
The Portland area is planning to impose freeway tolls. This is going to be a mess, pushing a lot of commuter traffic onto regular streets.
Submitting to fake pronouns and Orwellian redefinitions of words starts you down a dangerous slippery slope.
Wean yourself away from doing everything via smartphone.
Some don't observe Valentine's Day.
78% of voters support the Sanders-Warren plan to strengthen Social Security, including 72% of Republican voters. It should be possible to pass this.
The Supreme Court is about to hear a case that could increase internet censorship by making platforms (like YouTube) liable, in certain cases, for content posted by their users. If the ruling is really bad, it could force a lot of content onto platforms based outside the US.
Elon Musk's fragile ego just keeps getting funnier.
Fox News stars and execs knew the rigged/stolen election stuff was bullshit, even as they kept pushing it. Lies have consequences (found via Hackwhackers).
Looks like somebody got fed up with assholes blocking traffic.
Unionization is rising, but millions who want to join a union still can't.
Taking away words is a tactic to restrict thinking.
The total state extends its tentacles -- Virginia is opening the way for police to seize information on women's menstrual cycles.
It very much matters who the next labor secretary will be.
Religion promotes abuse.
Political influence corrupts universities.
Deregulation and corruption played a role in the Ohio rail disaster. More details here. Buttigieg has been scandalously passive. The administration needs to act but is bogged down in bureaucratic fiddle-faddling and excuse-making -- but don't expect Republicans to do anything constructive. The affected area is starting to look like an American Chernobyl; people and animals are already suffering health effects.
Dragging work-from-home employees back to the office is causing a drop in productivity. What did they expect, with the stress and wasted time of commuting added to the burdens of work?
Covid death rates are still substantially higher in Republican areas due to lower vaccination rates.
A new book is coming out about the Tavistock scandal.
Tesla is firing workers for trying to unionize. Starbucks has just been given a federal order to stop doing the same.
A racist attack on children in Ohio is being ignored by the media.
Healthcare pricing is a scam.
Kroger stands accused of widespread wage theft.
Republicans have a long history of attacks on Social Security and Medicare. Even Rick Scott is now backing down in the face of mass public uproar, but given the party's history, we'd be fools to trust him.
Is it really a surprise when Christians express hate?
Here's an early look at the 2024 Electoral College.
Richard Dawkins takes a stand against Newspeak.
The country is finally pushing back against election-denialist bullshit and threats.
Rent inflation is out of control; the market is not working and the government won't act.
If you're worried about presidential family corruption, focus on Jared Kushner.
An ex-employee's recent exposé of a pediatric gender clinic in Missouri has provoked an official investigation.
Lamar Johnson spent almost thirty years in prison for a crime that he almost certainly didn't commit.
Half of Republicans are sympathetic to Christian nationalism.
Hiring managers are getting a dose of their own medicine.
Trump hired an independent research firm to seek evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. When they found none, he suppressed the results.
"Wright watched as the man tried to peer under the stall and into the one her daughter was using....." Now guess who got threatened with arrest.
Canada has a new official religion, and heresy will be punished.
Rent inflation is driving the non-wealthy out of London.
Britain is a lot less racist than many countries.
Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon leaves office as an utter failure, ending a shameful career.
All across France, resistance to president Macron's scheme to raise the retirement age continues.
Hundreds of thousands marched in Madrid this week against health care privatization.
Europe has easily shrugged off Putin's energy embargo.
The tiny nation of Estonia is going all out to help Ukraine.
Here's where some of the weapons for Ukraine have come from (found via Hackwhackers).
Apparently chronic dongwilt is a growing problem in Russia.
The Putin regime has abducted over six thousand Ukrainian children and is holding them in camps to Russianize them. Russia's atrocities in Ukraine are systematic crimes against humanity.
Why is an oil company building its own private army?
A medical college in Columbia endorsed using comatose women to gestate fetuses, then backed down after a public backlash.
Overcoming long-standing divisions, Iran unites against the theocracy.
Here's what it's like being an ex-Muslim in Egypt.
The tinpot gangster-regime in Beijing begs the West not to utterly humiliate the tinpot gangster-regime in Moscow. Sorry, but Putin needs to be made an example of, to deter other potential aggressors. Any concessions to Russia will just mean more of the same. Putin is already trying to subvert and destabilize yet another country.
Inter-religious marriage is still controversial in India, apparently.
The Chinese regime is cutting health insurance for the masses, while the elite continues to get full coverage.
The regime is exploiting the Turkish earthquake for propaganda purposes.
The Afghan Taliban have banned contraception. Afghanistan has one of the world's highest maternal mortality rates.
More links at WAHF and Elder of Ziyon.
My own posts this week: a video on dating, the "exhausted majority" in politics, and an image round-up.
o o o o o
Today marks eighty days since railway workers were robbed of their right to strike for paid sick leave. Issue the executive order, Biden!
78% of voters support the Sanders-Warren plan to strengthen Social Security, including 72% of Republican voters. It should be possible to pass this.
ReplyDeleteForgive my Brignorance here but if that is the case shouldn't passing it be a doozy?
As to Sturgeon... Well, she's been brought down on the face of it (there are always wheels within wheels - this is politricks afterall - and she has been in charge for some time) by the issue of trans-rapists in women's prisons.
Oddly enough one of the candidates who might replace her is an evangelical Christian, Kate Forbes who really isn't "Woke". In fact she's anti-abortion and anti gay-marriage. The SNP is truly a mixed bag of assorted loons. Frankly, I'm English so I don't really care who becomes Lord High Haggis of the Porridge Lands. But this is almost as unreal as when Melanie Gibson tried it...
There's a long history of politicians not enacting things even when a majority of their own party's voters want them. Ideology and campaign contributions often exert a stronger pull. If the issue isn't one about which large numbers of voters feel strongly enough to actually change their votes next election, politicians have very little to fear from going against their wishes.
ReplyDeleteIf the SNP's major leaders include a gender-ideology crank and a pro-forced birth, anti-gay religious nut (both of which would be far out of step with the typical Scottish voter), then they deserve to be voted out. In any case, neither of those stances seems obviously related to Scottish independence -- which the voters rejected in a referendum just a few years ago anyway.
The boys trying to dial the phone is too much. I was laughing.
ReplyDeleteI suppose it is obsolete technology and not really any worse than not knowing how to drive a Model T. But it still seems weird that it's so unfamiliar to them. Don't they see people using phones like that in movies, if nothing else?
ReplyDeleteOn phones...
ReplyDeleteI think (a) The idea of a phone as a device which enables two people to talk to each other via the use of a number was almost magical in the days of Mr Bell. It's just as weird now. I don't know my wife's mobile number - it's on my phone. I tap her name and... But then I'm probs of the last generation for which phone defaults to mean a landline and not a smart phone which is essentially a pocket computer. 90-odd % of mobile use is not for voice communication. They really are for da yoof (anyone under 40) a totally different variety of thing. Almost like... Well, I heard someone say part of Steve Job's genius lay in realizing the computer as a communication rather than computing device. Hmm... There is a point there. I certainly didn't see any computer I've had (and I've had a few...) as really a comms device until ADSL. OK, dial-up - sort-of but then my first computer was a ZX Spectrum (very much in the class of the Commodore 64 for you across the pond) using audio tapes. This here laptop I'm on doesn't even have a DVD drive - well, I've got an external one for the increasingly rare occasions it is needed. It's one of those things you don't use often but when you need it, you need it.
Phones (as in mobiles) are totally different in concept to phones as I knew them as a kid. Here's an interesting idea... How would those kids struggling with a dial phone deal with a Nokia 3310. Could they even play "Snake"? And how would they handle MS-DOS? Yeah, kids, you can do a lot with a C:\ prompt. Just don't type del *.* in the root directory unless you're really, really sure. (or she just dumped you for a sociology student called Trevor). I never did that - honest. Or am I?
I recall pulse dial. Do any of you? different numbers took different times to "go through". This was a pain in the arse. I did have to learn to use the phone on an extension in my student digs in the '90s due to this. That wasn't a dial phone but I think the extenson played a part because I think tone dial was usual by then. I dunno. I'm talking the days of Britpop (mid-90s). Yeah, tunes now played on the radio as "classics". I played St. Etienne's song "Hobart Paving" on the Smart TV recently. I recall that song from my days of... Well... you know. Anyway, at the end, it's like (c) Universal 1993. Fuck me! I nearly had a stroke. I'm now as far away in time from that song as Sarah Cracknell and & Co were from four lovable "mop-tops" from Liverpool first strutting their stuff on the "Hit Parade" in mono.
No, I really never did that. I just hooked-up with a much smarter, wittier, better-looking girl who wasn't a pound-store Lucretia Borgia.
Get better, not bitter.
OK, I'd best bugger-off after that utter gem of fortune-cookie shitdom!
As always, a ton of things that cause me to laugh, to think, to share with my conservative jesus-y mom and some friends, too. I loved the cable car ride. I haven't considered myself an artist for very long, and wondered what it would be like to try to make my art big like that.
ReplyDeleteI'm so tired of our 'representatives' shitting on the people who elected them. I know I'm not the first person to realize that no one is looking out for me or mine.
So many bad things going on in the world right now. The Earthquake in Turkey is so devastating.
ReplyDeleteThe train derailment that caused all those chemicals to be in the air and soil. Man, that is bad.
Wow - those owls are so cool. Love how they just blend into the bark. The boys trying to use the phone are so funny. I wonder - did they ever work it out?
ReplyDeleteNickM: Most personal computers have really been mainly communication devices since the internet arose. How much time do most people spend on the internet vs using their computer to do math? It would be a very rare person these days who has a personal computer but no internet connection. It's just that the range of media on the internet requires a computer to handle it.
ReplyDeleteAt 62 obviously I'm old enough to remember rotary-dial phones and to have used them routinely, but I never was all that big on the technical aspects of them. I could probably still use one, though.
Not having a TV nor listening to the radio, I don't really have much sense of what's considered "old" vs contemporary in music. I just know what I like. It's a lot simpler.
Ami: Those cable cars seem frighteningly high up. I guess they're safe. Maybe all the murals distract people from the vertigo.
The government has been really slow and passive in dealing with the Ohio disaster. I think Buttigieg can forget about ever being president now.
Mary K: It is terrible. The death toll in Turkey/Syria from the quake is over forty thousand now. Inadequate building codes and a slow emergency response seem to have played a role, just like deregulation did in the derailment here.
Lady M: I guess owls are good at camouflage -- they eat better if their prey doesn't notice them until it's too late.
I really doubt those guys figured the phone out. They obviously had no clue. I guess they'd really never seen one of that kind before. The video just ended at two minutes because it was getting repetitious.