@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

CaseyL

@CaseyL@mastodon.nz

Seattleite, hiker, intense reader of SF, mystery, history, science. Adore all animals. Love twisty plots and humor.

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Skepticat, to random
@Skepticat@mstdn.social avatar

Right now, I'm scratching my head over the Democrats decision to save Mike Emanuel Johnson.

FWIW I did not support the save at the moment of voting either.

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@Skepticat

What would be gained by not saving him?

I don't mean "Hey, it would be simple justice," I mean, "In terms of the House actually functioning."

Snowshadow, to news
@Snowshadow@mastodon.social avatar

πŸ”₯ πŸ‘©β€πŸš’ Wildfire growth prompts another evacuation order in northeastern B.C.

Two more communities under evacuation orders:

Doig River First Nation and the Peace River Regional District as a fire threatens nearby.


https://montrealgazette.com/news/national/wildfire-growth-prompts-another-evacuation-order-in-northeastern-b-c

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@GottaLaff @Wileymiller @Snowshadow

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@GottaLaff @Wileymiller @Snowshadow

Sorry - it posted without my consent, basically.

What I was going to say is, we are in an age of constantly, on every issue, watching a train wreck and not being able to do anything about it.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

I'm going to ramble a bit, but it will hopefully come around to something. When I was growing up, I read a lot of older historical book series, a big one would be the Little House On The Prairie series. While I really enjoyed it, there are some very obviously negative portrayals of Native Americans and African Americans. I remember being angry about it as a kid, and my Dad telling me, that part of learning about history is that we have to acknowledge the people we were, and still are. But because Little House on the Prairie is only semi-autobiographical, I still have mixed feelings about this. I do think they are well written books by a female author, an interesting perspective on early American life, and as an adult I can see and acknowledge the issues with the text. If we try to get rid of every author with racist ideas there wouldn't be much left to read from the 20th Century, and it also feels like being dishonest about who we are. So, I'm very mixed, how do you all feel about it? Do you think children can handle books with racial issues like this if it's explained to them? What is our responsibility here?

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@RickiTarr

I'm generally not in favor of censoring old books to suit modern mores on principle.

Old books are more than stories: they are windows into another time. I think it's important to know those earlier times, warts and all.

These glimpses into what life was actually like are invaluable. They can be inspirational, depressing, and cautionary by turns.

Selling a false version of the past is never ever a good idea. We need to know where we've been as much as where we're going.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

Okay, this might sound weird, but this is what I'm thinking of today. I'm assuming most of you know the idiom, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth." I know it's about looking at the horse's teeth to check it's age and health, but in my heart I have an alternate history where it's about The Trojan Horse, which doesn't really even make much sense, but it's still living there rent free.

So, does anyone else do this, make up alternate histories for words or phrases? If you do, I'd love examples!

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@RickiTarr

"Brainwashing."

As a child, I thought this meant removing a brain from the skull and tossing it into the washing machine. Horrifying.

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

When your gay friends are stripped of their marriages, tell them you didn’t vote because you wanted to make a statement about Gaza.

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@StillIRise1963

Once Trump is back in office, the "I-didn't-vote-for-Biden-bc-GAZA!" brigades will never mention, or even think about, Gaza again.

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@WhiteCatTamer @StillIRise1963

The point is, some of the protestors, and most of the reaction to the protests, is not about Gaza. It's about sabotaging Democrats generally, and Biden specifically.

Some people are mentioning 1968, and the terror of this being a repeat of that. Not unwarranted: the protests were passionate, sincere.... and not only did not stop the war, but saw Nixon elected as the "law & order" candidate.

dgar, to random
@dgar@aus.social avatar

We do not throw away perfectly good food in this house!

We put it the fridge and let it go bad first…

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@dgar

Yes. I keep questionable food until it is definitely BAD and then toss it.

I always wondered if that was weird, and it's reassuring to know - if doing that is weird - a lot of people do it, so we can all be weird together :)

GottaLaff, (edited ) to legal
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

πŸ‘€Wait.. Really?

Via Klasfeld:

In Trump's filing: Gen counsel Alan Garten lists some..co's he says Trump Org unsuccessfully approached..None wd accept real estate as collateral, he says. Also worth noting:

Chubb was only surety "willing to even consider accepting real est as collateral," of more than 30 that also said no..Per Garten's affidavit:

πŸ‘‰πŸΌW/in past week, negotiations collapsed w Chubb, the insurance giant who provided the bond on the judgmentπŸ‘ˆπŸΌ

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@GottaLaff

"...Chubb, the insurrection giant who..."

I think you mean "insurance giant"? πŸ˜†

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@GottaLaff

It's very funny that "insurrection" is used so often - by you, or on this platform generally - that it's Autocorrect's default setting.

BlackAzizAnansi, to random
@BlackAzizAnansi@mas.to avatar

There's a place that I like to buy wings from that is only open like 3 days a week for four hours per day and I'm pretty sure it's a drug front and they're sick as hell of me actually ordering food from them πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@BlackAzizAnansi

There was - and still may be - a restaurant in Seattle's U District, purporting to serve Island food (I'm being deliberately vague here), that in all the years I ever walked by never had a single customer, no matter what time of day it was.

I went in once, out of curiosity, and the vibes were awful. A completely empty restaurant with completely unwelcoming vibes.

I left quickly. Always figured it was a front for ...something.Maybe drugs.

clive, to random
@clive@saturation.social avatar

Fantastic -- if super-distressing -- article by Gisele Navarro about the horrible state of product reviews online

The tl;dr is that Google seems to overweight reviews from longstanding big journalism brands ...

... but many of those brands, like Popular Science, were long ago bought up by private equity or conglomerates, then hollowed out ...

... so they now produce crappy articles that are probably lying about their "test labs" to please Google

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

Read it! So good

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@clive

sill exists, y'all. It's still the gold standard of product review.

And for tech products beyond CR's ambit, I guess I'd use sites that have been around a while and have not (SFAIK) been hollowed out: , , etc.

https://www.consumerreports.org/

GottaLaff, to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

Go @MichaelEMann !

β€œMichael Mann, a prominent climate scientist, won his long-standing legal battle against two right-wing bloggers who claimed that he manipulated data in his research and compared him to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky, a major victory for the outspoken researcher.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2024/02/08/michael-mann-bloggers-defamation-trial/

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@GottaLaff @MichaelEMann

Excellent news. Many, many kudos to Dr. Mann for his perseverance, and a huge CONGRATS for the win!

Teri_Kanefield, to random
@Teri_Kanefield@mastodon.social avatar

I caught a few headlines. It sounds like it wasn't just the conservative justices who were skeptical.

@StephanieJones, who I quote in the analysis I did on my blog, asked the right questions early on. (She rocks.)

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

The RW hacks argued in bad faith a lot of time, but one thing that has been bothering me (and which imo SCOTUS was correct to bring up) was retaliatory BS from red states who could use an affirming SCOTUS decision to throw Democrats (and, especially, Biden) off their state ballots.

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@Aethelstan @Teri_Kanefield @StephanieJones

Depends on how broadly you define "insurrection." The GOP defines it very narrowly to excuse Trump, but would define it very broadly to include Biden.

GottaLaff, to Colorado
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

πŸ‘€Via Lisa Rubin 🧡 1/...

On Thurs when asks SCOTUS to reverse 's ruling that he is ineligible to run for president under the , he'll be rep'd by Jonathan Mitchell, former Scalia clerk & TX Solicitor Genl. But that's not why you know him.

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@GottaLaff @MsMissy

More specifically, their MOTU employers are complicit.

Media reporters/analysts/etc. are complicit, complacent ("it won't affect me!") or -and this possibility is not to be underestimated - just extremely unintelligent. Dumb as rocks, basically.

GottaLaff, to random
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

OH HELL YES!

Jon Stewart, who during his 16-year run as host of the Comedy Central program established it as an entertainment and cultural force, will return to host the show each week on Mondays starting February 12, Showtime and MTV Entertainment Studios announced Wednesday.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/24/entertainment/jon-stewart-daily-show?cid=ios_app

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@GottaLaff

It will be interesting to see if Jon is still peddling that "both sides are crazy" crap.

CaseyL, to Florida
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

I was just in south for a week, tending to family stuff.

I live in , which has mountains and hills. The city itself has very steep streets. How steep? Downtown, you can enter an office highrise on 2nd Avenue and be on its first floor and then you can go up to the third or fourth floor, and walk out into 3rd Avenue.

Florida is completely flat in all directions. It doesn't seem real. I felt like I was in a simulation or an enormous indoor movie set.

Weird. Just weird.

GottaLaff, to climate
@GottaLaff@mastodon.social avatar

⚠️Nothing to see here. Just the impending end of humanity.πŸ₯΅

"The planet has experienced an astounding 6-month run of record-breaking temperatures, including the hottest November on record..

Global average temperatures last month were 2.59 degrees F above the 20th century average ...

The planet also experienced its hottest autumn on record β€” September through November β€” and its hottest ever January through Nov" https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2023-12-21/november-shatters-global-temperature-records

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@GottaLaff

I just wish we weren't taking everything else with us.

fraying, (edited ) to random
@fraying@xoxo.zone avatar

People who say they don’t like nazis, but turn around and take money from nazis, and give money to nazis, do in fact like nazis.

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@fraying

Has substack made no response at all to the open letter from the writers who publish there?

ct_bergstrom, to random
@ct_bergstrom@fediscience.org avatar

I've read this supposedly important email from my employer a dozen times and still can't parse the first sentence, let alone understand it.

It's sort of like a neutron star: bullshit corporate neologisms get layered so thick and so self-referentially that grammar itself begins to collapse.

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@ct_bergstrom

Workday: Making you spend 2 hours on a task that used to take 20 minutes.

Workday: We use role-based access to ensure you get hundreds of emails to approve things that are not in your Department, in order to hide the one or two that are relevant to you.

Somebody somewhere got a HUGE kickback for yoking us onto this horrible, horrible program.

aram, to academia
@aram@aoir.social avatar

I hate that I have to send emails like this. But that's what it's come to, isn't it.

#academia #academicchatter @academicchatter

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@therionofthebeast @aram @academicchatter

And therefore no one should have that option?

So, in order for "no one" to have more options than anyone else, does your notion of justice require that everyone should have the same lack of options?

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

Why the hell are people I know who make ethical choices about everything - from the food they eat to how they travel to the clothes they buy - so INCAPABLE of doing that for the tech choices they make?

For goodness sake: Threads is owned by Meta. That ALONE is reason enough to not use it. And there ARE alternatives!

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@jon

First, let me say right off that I am one of the online habitues (maybe even addicted to being online), so what I'm about to say applies to me as well as to everyone else:

I think it would be better to not use social media at all. I think social media has proven far more destructive than positive.

Want to stay in touch with people? Use the phone. Write a letter (some of you may be too young to remember "letters"). If you must use tech, there's Skype.

Get off-line.

shoq, to random
@shoq@mastodon.social avatar

It never has worked. Not even once. And that mythos mostly derives from Leninist rhetoric. And who boasts of that inspiration? Steve Fucking Bannon.

Source: @CaseyL
https://mastodon.social/@CaseyL@mastodon.nz/111486084036067098

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@ArtBear @shoq

What "worked" after WWII was that the US was the only industrial power left standing. For decades we had the largest and richest economy on the planet, and we got to thinking it would always be that way.

Surprise! US industrial supremacy was, in fact, not eternal. (Under the Marshall Plan, the US actually rebuilt the countries and economies that would come to compete with us.)

ParanoidFactoid, to Marriage
@ParanoidFactoid@mastodon.social avatar

From The Intellectualist at the hellsite, here's Senator Mike Braun [R-IN] saying he's open to SCOTUS changing settled law and depriving people of equal protection in** mixed racial marriages.**

Thus allowing states to reimplement old miscegenation laws, or banning so-called mixed ethnic marriages, requiring SCOTUS overturn Loving v Virginia in 1967.

These are confederate radicals.

Senator Mike Braud from Indianna on supporting the right of states to ban mixed marriages, or ethnically mixed relationships.

CaseyL,
@CaseyL@mastodon.nz avatar

@ParanoidFactoid

Like I've been saying: The Republican Party is no longer an American political party.

It is a Confederate Party.

Its explicit aim is to restore the pre-Civil War era in law, politics, and social policy.

Do not vote for the GOP for anything.

Do not vote 3rd Party or for your favorite vanity candidate.

Vote for Democrats up and down the ballot.

Yes, no matter how pissed off you are at them.

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