SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, FOSTA, SESTA, the investigatory powers bill, David Cameron's porn filter bill, FISA and warrantless wiretapping, mass surveillance, manufactured consent, to name a few.
@BlackAzizAnansi The user partition filling up because half the users built emacs and/or TeX in their home directories because I fell behind keeping the /usr/local versions up to date.
What are some numbers in your field that anyone else in the field would identify without even thinking about it, but folk outside may have no idea. Just the numbers, no explanations. Yet.
FYI - I worked on 2 different #RealityTV shows in #Canada & after those lived work experiences - told everyone I could - don't agree to go on these shows. It's almost all scripted, not reality. Crews are forced to put pressure on voluntary participants - who rarely know WTF they're signing up for & producers exploit naivety. Don't chase easy fame/easy money - they both come at high personal costs. Don't agree to be traumatized on TV, for money. You'll regret it.
@RickiTarr I too love all the Treks; it takes a galaxy.
I’m just wondering when the timelines will get as obscured as in that early oughts low-budget sci-fi thriller we all forgot but are going “Oh, YEAH!” about, in unison.
@RickiTarr What makes me sad: Paramount+ ending series with less promised new works in the pipeline. At their peak, five series at a time per year. Now, I'm not sure that will ever happen again. (They clearly aren't interested in elevating one series to a full season commitment of 23 episodes. That would at least be a sign of good faith if they can't run more than a couple of shows.)
What doesn't make me sad: Faith of The Heart. I still love Enterprise, even if the presence of theme song lyrics made it weird.
Serious question: when and in which contexts did calling people "individuals" emerge as a common practice, as a synonym for people? Or "an individual" for "a person"?
I ask because I'm noticing it in student writing, and I associate it with police-speak. I don't know if it's in some corners of social science or medicine too
My (lacking citations, but lived/remembered experience) perspective is that I first noticed it years ago in cop / legal speak, which is one of the few places where "person" cannot be a simple synonym for "individual." (i.e. "They had the drugs on their person" vs "They had the drugs on their individual [nonsense!]")
From there, it seeped into common usage through sports reporting, and then other news more generally. To my ears the usage always felt deeply unnatural, like the sports reporters had been coached to say "individual" on air in order to not accidentally imply or outright say decidedly racist things.
Then, from there, people much younger than I seem to have taken it up as an apparently "inclusive" way of referring to other folks.
I feel it's anti-social, alienating, & mostly dehumanizing. But even the lefty younger folks I know use it thinking that they're respecting individuality, rather than doing Zombie Reagan's work of breaking social bonds.
@ryanrandall Thanks, this chimes a lot with what I was thinking/not quite articulating.
Sports reporting isn't a link I'd have come up with but I think the observation that it's a way to not refer to any identifying/social group characteristics is dead on
@RickiTarr
> If the gods exist, it's mighty presumptuous to think they have our best interests at heart, or even think about us at all
If Terry Pratchett's Small Gods is to be believed, they think about nothing else, but they care about our interests only when it serves their own best interests.
"the United States is committed to serving as a model in the international community in promoting and protecting the collective rights of #indigenous peoples as well as the human rights of all individuals."
The contention that using high-filtration masks to prevent transmission of respiratory disease is “unscientific” and “lacking evidence” when we have reams of aerosol and transmission studies is a display of either unawareness/scientific illiteracy (super fixable! non-shameful!) or of an intentional disregard of the evidence for emotional or ideological reasons (common but troubling).
@GottaLaff Its only complicated for her because she can’t figure out any way to interpret the law or twist the legal proceedings in a way where Trump isn’t plainly guilty of illegally retaining top secret classified information. 🙄🤷♂️
@flexghost The press needs to start asking republicans who have condemned trump serious questions like: "Do you think trump is a threat to democracy? Do you think trump will get hundreds of thousands of people killed again? Do you secretly admire trump for being incompetent yet still getting votes? If trump launched nuclear weapons at NYC would you cheer?"
#NikkiHaley is supporting #Trump’s 2024 White House bid, she said Wednesday in her first public remarks since exiting the Republican presidential primary more than two months ago.
@GottaLaff You guys aren't going to believe this but Mr. Alito and his wife also have a pesky neighbor on Long Beach Island, NJ. They have some of the worst luck with neighbors.
@cosvak That empty narrative is infamously known as the “Tweedle-Dee, Tweedle-Dumb,” “Not a dimes worth of difference,” “Both Sides are exactly the same,” theories. The stock in trade of Nader, Greenwald, Moore, Sarandon, Stein and RFK, Jr. It’s noise that only dispirits voters. Please don’t make more of it.
@cosvak@DuncanWatson@mastodonmigration You do realize you’re just spouting really old and tired cliches, right? I had these same arguments with people a lot better than you in every election since 1976. There are reasons why 3rd parties fail here, so it’s impossible to diss something that isn’t a thing, and probably never will be. Anger with only a flourish of purpose is just outrage without aim.
@cosvak@DuncanWatson@mastodonmigration And one more thing. Everyone I have know that sounded like you, going back to Nader, always came to regret it. You’re as unique as a drop of water in a pond. Go ask them. Many if not most are quite open about their many regrets for letting idealism help the much greater of two evils get elected.