2021 feels like such a long time ago, now. Back then I had hopes people could be convinced through reason, through stories, through *pleading* to get vaccinated.
Alas, a lot of that hope has been knocked out of me.
Ya gotta admit, "witchcraft" makes as much sense as anything else they say.
G Bruney, "The Disappearance of the Public Bench", _Places_, 2026-April.
"Benches are microcosms of an expansive debate about who belongs in urban public spaces. When they are removed or made uninviting, we lose more than just a place to rest."
placesjournal.org/article/the-...
The obvious solution is a national law that mandates fair, objective redistricting everywhere, but *conservatives do not want that*. To be subject to the same rules as everyone else -- as all the lesser people -- is inherently offensive to them.
(All I ever do is restate Wilhoit.)
Personally, I'd've gone with Vietnamese, where no vowel may go unmarked and are sometimes marked more than once.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam...
Gotta admit, that sums it up.
"Today Sen Tuberville said ... Never mind. You needn't care."
Most people learn from examples.
Trump sets a bad example, in a very instructive way.
Oh, but sooooo close...
Sorry -- beginning right around 1901.
A little history of vaccine resistance and mandates in Boston in the 1800s, with multiple colorful (and unaccountably handsome) characters.
www.someweekendreading.blog/vaccine-mand...
I see the innumeracy of the rulers has not gotten any better in the last couple years.
www.someweekendreading.blog/math-illiter...
They believe they are entitled to their own law. They believe they are entitled to their own facts. And, apparently, they believe they are entitled to their own math.
This is the world we live in now.
I will once again posit you could win with >70% if the vote with the simple "Police settlements come out of their pension fund, not the city funds" policy.
No.
First order of business should be impeachments and criminal trials.
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.
The corporate world is... not better.
For decades, economists gave short shrift to the idea of monopsony — a power employers can have to suppress wages. Now a wave of research suggests it's everywhere, and a new book argues it's key to understanding today's inequality. n.pr/4e0RHRi
I'm an old guy who *has* seen normal politics.
And yet, I *still* wonder why Dems spend so much time "just standing there".
It's not enough to have a good agenda unless they are anti-Trump FIRST.
Only when we've convicted & imprisoned as many senior Trumpers as possible & instituted deep reforms to prevent fascist recurrence... THEN other policy can happen.
Imprison fascists. Prevent recurrence. Then everything else.
Today's blog post:
A look at some slowly melting snow farms... revealing cars that were buried under tons of snow. Also, some pretty frost flowers.
www.someweekendreading.blog/snowmageddon...
Best case, of course, would be baking a chocolate sheet cake while on a moon of Jupiter.
Here's a walk-through of a psych paper in which AI users and controls took the Big 5 personality test and the Dark Triad test (machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy).
Prolific AI use was strongly associated with all 3 dark triad personality traits.
www.someweekendreading.blog/who-uses-ai/
This is, ultimately, unsurprising.
Wellcovorin hasn't been manufactured for 27 years and is off approval. There are some generic leucovorins made by dodgy supplement companies.
Oz is a major investor in one of them, iHerb.
What are the odds of that?
www.someweekendreading.blog/autism-aceta...
Excellent point on priorities, in order:
1. Expel/convict/imprison Trump & culpable high-level officials.
2. Deep, possibly radical, reforms preventing fascist recurrence (no Electoral College, gerrymandering, etc.).
(3) Democracy secured, THEN policy goals. (Healthcare, green energy, etc.)
We're watching the open web as it existed die in real time.
So we not only have to apply Reconstruction II and keep at it for a couple generations, but be ready to respond to a variety of nefarious ways of pushing back.
Thing about Reconstruction was, it applied *intense* pressure on the wealthy Southerners being "reconstructed".
The political response was the Hayes-Tilden compromise, exploiting a flaw in the Electoral College to counter-pressure the North withdraw troops.
Then... Jim Crow & KKK everywhere.
People asked how we got here, check out the drawing...
Nom d'un pneu!
making all the p-hackers look like rookies