“Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought...

― Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

#coward #fool #control #thief #liar #tyrant #slavery #trump

Hopefully with due credit to Sarah Kendzior, who alerted us years ago to the fact that Trump and his cronies operate as “a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government”. 😒

I figured it was staged (due to the Presidential security issues I mentioned in a previous post).

But I thought they’d at least screen and hire a real DoorDasher, for verisimilitude. 🤔

They do not respect the art of theater. 😒

Not Today, but ...

This administrations commitment to the enshitification of the Kennedy Center has many acts canceling thier bookings.

Coming soon it will be available for weddings. No bar mitzvahs though. This administration prefers the facilities to be reserved for preferred demographics only.

Several times my bacon got saved by them back in the day. I'll take professional experience over AI & algorithms any day of the week.

I may not travel much anymore, but that's all the more reason to keep one in one's pocket should need arise.

Please pass along contact info for your travel agent.

Once-Adventurous Salmon Can’t Believe She Ended Up Moving Back To Birthplace, Having A Bunch Of Kids

Once-Adventurous Salmon Can’t Believe She Ended Up Moving Back To Birthplace, Having A Bunch Of Kids theonion.com/once-adventurous-salmon-...

I second the motion. (Reposted with Alt Text)

"He's got 'em on the list — he's got 'em on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed — they'll none of 'em be missed"

-The Mikado
Gilbert and Sullivan

This photo is also interesting, because zooming in on it lets you see the small gold paint smudges around the molding, where someone did a *very* half-assed job. 😒

Use some damn masking tape! 😏

A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)

More context on this #Artemis II image:

* This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right

* The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon:
☀️🌍🚀🌕

Applies to all forms of creation…

That rug really tied the room together.

I was the camera guy when J.P. & Gertrude hosted the KTZZ show, Northwest Rock filmed at various vistas around Seattle back in 1993.

They did the same kind of stunts with me that they pulled with the crew on the old kids show. A pinnical of professionalism in clowning around.

That show was brilliant.

I once got to go to a taping where a pre Disney Channel, Bill Nye the science guy, played with liquid nitrogen in front of the studio audience.

I miss the days of broadcasting and locally made programming.

Screenshot of the Audible logo. Amazon dominates the audio book market with it's enshitifying DRM laden app. They make it very difficult to play the content they sell outside of their proprietary apps. ( you don't actually own the content you buy. Amazon has a history of locking users out of content they have purchased long after the fact. Their app is a masterclass in enshitification, as evey update over the past decade has made the App worse. After years of my books cutting off every morning, I began my quest to see this fixed. Now three years later, with no human response to my multiple attempts to communicate with this tech behemoth, I have only the public shaming of social media to voice my discontent. I love my audio books. I hate that Amazon makes the experience of accessing them an arduous chore.

Every day my Audible app quits sometime between 6 and 7 am. This even tracks through the clock changes for DST.

This is a widely documented issue that has existed for years.

Yet bug this persists unfixed.

Every morning.

My Audible reminder of Amazon's enduring commitment to #Enshitification.

Caption:
Crew, it’s time for a sit-down to organize and exercise our rights. This Saturday. No Kings.

Find a No Kings near you at NoKings.org. We can’t sit this one out.
@rayzzo.bsky.social @1acommittee.bsky.social @50501movement.bsky.social

huh.

#time_flies ⌛

a paper clip with a face on it is sitting on top of a piece of paper . Alt: "Clippy"the paper clip with a face on it is sitting on top of a piece of ruled paper . This highly annoying precursors to the AI assistants of today was a pioneer in Enshitification and remains an Icon of unwanted intrusions by tech companies telling you what you should want.

It's good I'm not the only one to see the resemblance.

I would say it's nice that the old boy found a new gig, but Clippy was nothing but annoying.

Any focus group should have quickly revealed a subliminal revulsion such a mascot inspires. But why use evidence based research for decision-making.

It was nice while it lasted.

Death, Taxes, and Enshitification are the inescapable truths of modern human existence.

These days there's an abundance of natural instruction in the Buddhist concept of impermanence and the suffering caused by our attachment to all the good things in the world.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom SHREDS Trump for attacking her husband's dyslexia YouTube video by Brian Tyler Cohen

#GavinNewsom's wife speaking fact/reality in the midst of the 'old #narcissist #illusory mindset' of #Trump and his vulgar comments about #dyslexia.

Imagine if dyslexia was the only 'processing difference' with Trump...
How different the U.S. would be today.

I'm glad Jasmine Crockett put this on the record.

There has always been hypocrisy in America. Before Trump there was usually a veneer of proprietary maintained by some selective framing of the facts.

The current disconnect from truth has stripped away that veneer, revealing uncomfortable truths.

Clearly, he spoke to a former president using a Ouija board.

I'll be visiting this years festival through the looking glass. (aka the virtual ticket) It's not too late to get yours.

Santa Says:

“Trust?” “Yes, trust. Anything you do - borrowing money from a bank, commissioning a piece of work, sending or receiving a parcel, making a plan with friends, ordering food at a restaurant - all those things can only happen because of mutual trust on both sides.”

I am reading a gentle little book called “What You Are Looking For Is In the Library,” and i just read this. And realized that between AI and the people currently running America, Trust is going thru some things right now. And so are we all.

This is how art makes the world a better place.

This wasn't seeking out fame or financial gain. Just a sense that this thing should be in the world.

Shifting countless perceptions, seting those minds ever more to ponder in the odd moment between moments, their encounter with this thing.

Genius.

Iran put the "holy grail" of peace deals on the table. It would have prevented Iran from ever having the bomb AND guarantee an unprecedented level of international verification. A deal legitimately worth the Nobel prize.

Trump started bombing about 12 hours after this interview posted online.

I'm one of the ones who likes to read the long form. I want to understand things beyond an AI summary.

I start with the fullest picture possible as a staring point for forming my perspectives.

I miss working in TV news, when I had the privilege of seeing the story parts that didn't make the cut.

Those are healthy uses as long as one has the emotional/intellectual development sufficient to parse the data stream into a coherent context grounded and validated in the offline world.

Actual milage varies in the level of sophistication people possess.

I wouldn't call it evolution. It's more likely the consequence of a few hundred years of social policy influenced by eugenic ideology.

Be it by breeding, economic constraint, or conditioning through social influences, our oligarchic overlords seek to make us into docile chattel in their service.