Brody!! ❤️❤️❤️

I’m so sorry.

As we gear up for what may be an intense fire year, here's a thread of advice for PIOs and other crisis communicators out there, including ICs and agency administrators.

Be true to yourself. The easiest way to lose credibility is to pretend to be someone else. People will know it immediately. 1/

“That’s why herd immunity is so important. If there hadn’t been an outbreak when Renae was a baby, I don’t think she would have contracted it. She was eligible for the vaccine just seven months later, and I gave it to her, but it was too late.”

“Parents must realize that refusing vaccinations doesn’t just put your own child at risk. It puts other children at risk. I don’t know where Renae picked up measles. It’s one of the most contagious viruses that exists, and it could have been from anywhere.”

Opinion | Measles Took My Daughter. This Is What I Want Everyone to Know.

“What I didn’t know was that measles can cause long-term complications. A child can seem fine while the virus slowly replicates in her brain… Because both Britain and the United States are confronting outbreaks, I am sharing my story. Parents should know just how dangerous this disease is.”

I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to speak my mind, to state what I believe even when it's directly at odds with billionaire power. I'm among the minority allowed to do it. But it's not a privilege. It's a right. And everyone should possess it.

On the other hand, no one ever lost money by telling billionaires what they want to hear. The airwaves are full of the oligarchs' minions, reciting their creeds as if these were some kind of arcane truth they've stumbled across. Almost every political conversation is dominated by these elite lies.

We claim to treasure free speech, above almost anything. But on the most critical issue, very few of us are free to speak. The majority are silenced by fear of censure or loss of employment. This conspiracy of silence looks more like what you'd expect in an authoritarian regime than in a democracy.

One problem is that many articulate, confident people are forbidden by the terms of their employment to speak out. To acquiesce in the power that threatens everything is acceptable and uncontroversial. To contest it brings your employer "into disrepute" and could have you sacked.

Almost everything we argue about is a substitute for the thing we should be arguing about: the immense wealth & power of an oligarchic class, which captures governments, ruins lives and wrecks the living planet.
This class redirects our rage at scapegoats. To resist its lies is to resist its power.

A wild thread:

490 million years ago, the seafloor which would become the city of Baltimore was a serpentinite-hosted hydrothermal vent complex.

Those vents laid the ultramafic structures that would, in 1812, be discovered as America's first chromite mine.

we owe our evolutionary success to our social behavior; interdependence is our species' primary survival strategy. it's isolation that will get you killed in an apocalyptic scenario, not the other way around.

Yes!

I do believe the term is regional manager. 😉

Risk of 'megaquake' in Japan higher after powerful earthquake strikes After a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck of the coast of Japan, setting off tsunami warnings, there's an elevated risk of a “megaquake” following in its wake

NEW: After today's magnitude 7.7 quake off the Pacific coast of Japan, the country has issued a 'megaquake advisory', suggesting there's a 10x greater risk of a magnitude 8.0+ quake in the coming days.

I break down what this means for @sciam.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/risk...

As a former StoryCorps facilitator, this is fucking disgusting.

End the project already, Dave.

You created a good model: you encouraged people to sit and do oral history for 20 yrs.

Turning StoryCorps into a surveillance capitalism nightmare is not worth the money to keep the project going.

The motto is StoryCorps was "listening is an act of love." CONSCIOUS LISTENING, intimate listening!

I feel sick thinking that this phrase is being used as cover to make people think that list listening all the time (Siri, Alexa, Prego, etc.) is also an act of love.

Coachella is trying to wipe all of the footage of The Strokes protest set so I’m gonna post it here. The last images on the screen made me cry.

Power without accountability: The Palantir manifesto The problems with our tech philosopher kings

New, from me: Take the Palantir manifesto seriously, if not literally.
It reveals that our tech philosopher kings want public money, but without public accountability. This creates a dilemma for governments unaligned with its techno-fascist vision. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/palantir-w...

A picture of a rather dilapidated copy of "The picture of Dorian Gray" There is visible water damage to the cover and the plastic cover is yellowing. Obviously, not evident from the picture but there is a truly foul musty smell emanating from it!

Last week, a gentleman returned this rather dilapidated copy of this famous book to us after 50 years. He had found it in his attic!
Presumably this means there is a pristine copy somewhere in our libraries....

I’m so sorry. I hope the lovely memories soothe your heart.

No. It’s been moving around our and our neighbors yards for a while. Today the cat was playing with it which is how I was able to coax it into the bucket.

Just a thought: How about we stop shaming the poor for buying things that may not be essential, and start shaming the rich for making a profit off things that are essential?

a woman is crying and laughing with the words literally crying laughing above her ALT: a woman is crying and laughing with the words literally crying laughing above her

Oh my goodness everyone you should’ve seen him jump and squeal! I laughed for several minutes with tears in my eyes.

The gopher has since been relocated to a nearby cow pasture.

Two cats, one brown tabby, and one fluffy, black-and-white tuxedo lie on an outside patio table that is covered with student papers and a grading rubric, along with a bag of pens. On the ground nearby is a red and white Britney dog taking a nap.

I have a lot of supervision with my grading today.

This is rough. I wonder if closure at the north rim has impacted this as well?

“In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political,

I must listen to the birds.

And in order to hear the birds,

the warplanes must be silent”

- Marwan Makhoul