rayckeith

rayckeith, 1 month ago to random

The GOP can't leave MAGA — "Americans must electorally mercy-kill the Republican Party" | Salon.com

"If we were a healthy democracy and society, Congress would impeach Clarence Thomas, and impeach (for lying under oath) every Supreme Court justice who said Roe v. Wade was settled law or a “super precedent,” and then voted to overturn it. The DOJ would prosecute at least three Supreme Court justices for bribery and corruption, for accepting lavish gifts and vacations from billionaires, some of whom had business before the court. Gini Thomas and several members of the House would be indicted for their roles in the Jan. 6 insurrection. The courts would declare gerrymandering to be unconstitutional.

"We’d pass an amendment declaring “the right to vote shall not be abridged,” and throw everyone involved in voter purging schemes in prison."
https://www.salon.com/2024/03/11/the-cant-leave-maga--americans-must-electorally-mercy-the-party/

rayckeith, 1 year ago to random

"Lecture #7 - My Method for Defeating Procrastination" https://youtu.be/i2EEnJedcYU

"motivation harvesting" leverage your desire to not look bad in front of your peers

making a commitment to a peer where you state your goal, work a while, then tell them what you accomplished.

rayckeith, 8 days ago to random

Election Countdown, 176 Days to Go: ‘Hot dogs. Let's talk about hot dogs.’

"2) And speaking of a guy in a bar …

Among Donald Trump’s virtues is that he does not drink. That is useful to remember in considering his current speaking style. On Saturday night Deb and I sat through the nearly two-hour entirety of his rally performance at Wildwood, on the Jersey shore, as televised by Fox. The whole thing is archived here, courtesy of Right Side Broadcasting."
https://fallows.substack.com/p/election-countdown-176-days-to-go

rayckeith, 7 days ago to random

if someone can publish (this dreck I just read), then I should be able publish my book.

rayckeith, 1 month ago to random

A friend of mine takes care of feral cats in Texas.

rayckeith, 1 month ago to random Esperanto

listening to an accented person pronouncing "Earth" as "ur-roth" or "orth"

🤪

rayckeith, 11 days ago to random

Understanding the Teapot Dome Scandal of the 1920s

History doesn't repeat but it rhymes.

"Blatant corruption was discovered, denials were made, hearings were held on Capitol Hill, and all the time reporters and photographers swarmed the scene. By the time it was over, some of the characters stood trial and were convicted. Yet the system changed very little.

The story of Teapot Dome was essentially the tale of an unqualified and inept president, surrounded by larcenous underlings. An unusual cast of characters took power in Washington following the turbulence of World War I, and Americans who thought they were returning to normal life instead found themselves following a saga of thievery and deception."
https://www.thoughtco.com/teapot-dome-scandal-4158547

rayckeith, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

A guy on Xitter says this resume (minus the highlighting) got him 31 job interview requests.

https://x.com/jerryjhlee/status/1778484920593055763?s=46&t=3d9pIKw692D3Dy-4Ms4pFA

(if true, this proves that people aren't really reading resumes.)

rayckeith, 1 month ago to random

"THREAD: What is happening in UK universities is astonishing. Right now about quarter of universities are laying off staff. Almost all universities expect to make a loss this year. And the entire thing is happening in an effort to deceive the population about migration statistics.

It's true that migration to the UK is high right now. We have a government with a headline policy of reducing immigration. But the only way they have found to do it is to try to discourage international students from taking up places in UK universities. Why this makes no sense:

Foreign students are a straightforward benefit to the UK economy. Each international student brings in tens of thousands of pounds. Broadly, these people are consumers not just of education, but also of all sorts of other goods and services. More specifically, you can imagine as an export …"

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1774030136737730661.html

rayckeith, 2 days ago to random

Revolution, Fear, and Power: The Unseen Threads Connecting Stalin’s Russia to Modern America

"Fred Koch, the founder of the Koch dynasty, had made his first big money “building refineries, training Communist engineers, and laying down the foundation of Soviet oil infrastructure” for Stalin. He saw up close and personal how violent the USSR really was, and apparently never forgot it.

Koch Industries — and thus the Tea Party and the best of today’s Republican infrastructure — would never have happened were it not for the money Stalin gave Fred Koch for his services. Neither would the John Birch Society, which Koch heavily funded in the wake of the “communist” Brown v Board Supreme Court decision, have ever acquired the influence it did."
https://hartmannreport.com/p/revolution-fear-and-power-the-unseen-e28

rayckeith, 1 month ago to random

"Today I’m going to focus my rage and call out the corporate media for this latest example of journalistic malpractice. By the end, you’ll see how together we can save democracy.

To the media: You continue to fail us on Donald and abortion

Just two days ago, Donald put out a statement pretending he had a newfound clarity on the abortion issue. After looking at polls that showed the unpopularity of the extreme anti-abortion measures in the swing states, Donald miraculously discovered that he no longer supports a national ban on abortion. (Just a month ago, however, Donald privately supported a 16-week national ban.)

Now he says the issue should be left to the states. Of course, the move backfired, spectacularly.

The bottom line? Punting the decision to the states is an invitation for more draconian abortion bans, and the media is largely ignoring it.

After Donald’s statement on abortion, we saw the most pathetic media coverage I have ever …"
https://marytrump.substack.com/p/the-biggest-media-fail-of-the-year

rayckeith, 1 year ago to random

today I learned that an episode of "Love, American Style" was a stealth pilot for the series "Happy Days".

rayckeith, 5 months ago to writing

on tumblr:

"🔊🔊 END STAGE DISCOURSE!! END STAGE DISCOURSE!! WE HAVE ARRIVED AT "FICTIONAL SEX IS COERCIVE BECAUSE CHARACTERS ARE BEING FORCED TO DO THINGS BY THE AUTHOR"!!!! 🔊"

https://www.tumblr.com/mircalla/737513509659852800

#writing #goingTooFar

rayckeith, 11 months ago to random

migraine knocked out my morning plans.☹️

rayckeith, 1 month ago to random

Servants of the Mafia State - Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter

"Jamie Gorelick is one of these figures, a Forrest Gump of 21st century corruption. Like Garland, she is a Democrat who serves GOP objectives, the most notable of which for Garland was working as Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s lawyer and getting them the White House clearances that they should have been denied due to conflicts of interest.

"As a result of Gorelick’s actions, Kushner gained classified intelligence that he likely shared with or sold to foreign states, including Saudi Arabia, from which he pocketed two billion dollars, and Israel, to which he has been tied since birth due to his family’s long friendship with the Netanyahu family, to the point that Benjamin Netanyahu slept in Jared’s bed…

"Garland has refused to investigate Kushner. A likely reason is that, were he to investigate Kushner – who remains a profound national security threat – he would also be investigating his best friend."

https://sarahkendzior.substack.com/p/servants-of-the-mafia-state

rayckeith, 1 month ago to random

Inside the Election Denial Groups Planning to Disrupt November | WIRED

"But in recent weeks, these groups have held training sessions about how to organize on a hyperlocal level to monitor polling places and drop boxes, challenge voter registrations en masse, and intimidate and harass voters and election officials. And some are preparing to roll out new technology to fast-track all of these efforts: One of the groups claims they’re launching a new platform for checking voter rolls that contains billions of “data elements” on every single US citizen.

These groups could have a major impact on the 2024 election."
https://www.wired.com/story/election-denial-groups-november-2024/

rayckeith, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

@177161

Framelab podcast

“Hello, and welcome back to the FrameLab Podcast. I'm Gil Duran. In this episode, we talk about an interesting new poll that backs up what Dr. George Lakoff has been saying for decades.
Democrats need to talk more about freedom, and they need to emphasize how they are for the people, unlike the Republicans, who are for the wealthy, for corporations, and increasingly for Vladimir Putin. A new poll conducted by futuremajority.org reveals that messages based on these frames are a powerful way to reach movable voters, that is, swing voters whose choice could be pivotal in 2024. Here's my talk with Stephen Clermont of Change Research, who conducted the poll.”

From FrameLab Podcast: Election 2024: Can the Freedom Frame Save America?, Mar 4, 2024
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/framelab-podcast/id1329641299?i=1000648026004

rayckeith, 5 days ago to random

"Whooping cough is caused by a bacteria called Bordetella pertussis. Pertussis often begins like most other respiratory infections, with typical symptoms including a runny nose and a fever. The distinctive "whoop" cough may only appear after a week or so of illness – though it does not occur in all cases. As such, confirming cases of whooping cough may require a laboratory test.

Whooping cough is very infectious. On average, a single case of pertussis can transmit infection on to around 15-17 other people. This infection rate is similar to measles and higher than the COVID variants.

The reason whooping cough is so infectious is in part due to pertussis having a very long infectious period of up to five weeks – where infected people can pass the bacteria on to others. Prompt treatment can greatly reduce transmission – antibiotics shown to reduce contagiousness just five days after starting treatment."
https://flipboard.com/@sciencealert/health-43m5auulz/-/a-DibHQr-dQdupkv4ryPjYvA%3Aa%3A565656366-%2F0

rayckeith, 29 days ago to random

Thread by @PiperK

"I'm so glad I watched this. Four DC National Guardsmen, under oath, say that Charles Flynn and Gen. Piatt lied about what happened on January 6. Flynn's cover-up, of course, doesn't make Trump's do-nothing day any less criminal. 1/ @sandibachom

The main point of each officer's testimony is that the DoD Inspector General's report about J6 is bunk. I have long said this. It needs a disclaimer on it. 2/
Captain Timothy Nick testified that Gen. Charles Flynn told SecArmy McCarthy to "deny the command" to allow the D.C. National Guard to come to the aid of the Capitol Police. 🔥 Boom"
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1782960105803178269.html

rayckeith, 1 month ago to random

Watching Leverage on DVD -- a boxed set -- interesting commentary -- unfortunately (as mentioned in some reviews) there are no subtitles.

Mentions of fractal "three act" structure... doing an con, or an "op", or a fight scene, is plotted in three acts.

rayckeith, 1 day ago (edited 23 hours ago) to random

rayckeith, 1 month ago to random

"But! Just to offer a couple of explanations: All three of the fastest languages have only five vowels. The three slowest have upwards of 20 [vowel sounds], and all are tonal, meaning that there is a gigantic number of possible syllables in those languages.

"What Pellegrino found is that, essentially, all languages convey information at roughly the same speed when all the factors are taken into account: around 39 bits per second. The higher the syllable-per-second rate, the lower the information density, which creates a trade-off that makes all languages around the same in terms of information rate."

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/worlds-fastest-language

rayckeith, 1 month ago to random Esperanto

There are no guardrails: Trump's second term will lead to a dictatorship - Boing Boing

"This is why I tell you again: should Trump win, everything I have at hand tells me that the US's plunge into Russian or Hungarian-style despotism will be more rapid than you can possibly imagine, because Heritage and the right already have planned it all out.

If Trump wins and the worst comes to pass, these "rational centrists" are going to have a lot to apologize for."
https://boingboing.net/2024/03/28/there-are-no-guardrails-trumps-second-term-will-lead-to-a-dictatorship.html

rayckeith, 20 days ago (edited 20 days ago) to random

Starting The Magician (1973) starring Bill Bixby.

His private jet is supposed to be his full-time home.

Couldn't get my tv to stop stretching the picture but the dvd/bluray player had a setting to turn off picture-stretching.

rayckeith, 4 days ago to random

Russia Is Buying Politicians in Europe. Is It Happening Here Too? | The New Republic

"The Voice of Europe scandal is merely the latest example of Russian influence on the continent. Last year, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project revealed that politicians in Germany, Italy, and Cyprus were paid by Russian operatives to introduce legislation literally written by Russian intelligence officers. The OCCRP also uncovered examples of parliamentary staff members, party activists, and members of think tanks publishing articles in European press outlets under their name, while the articles were actually written by Russian handlers…"
https://newrepublic.com/article/180630/russia-corruption-network-europe-buying-politicians-america?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=SF_TNR