I think my wife and me are the last two people without tattoos.
I saw a guy with an artificial leg with a NY Mets logo on the knee.
I feel bad for anybody sitting in my row on a flight. I fidget something terrible.
I listened to “Never Gonna Give You Up” end-to-end for the first time since rickrolling became a thing and you know what? It is a pleasant song.
Here’s something I saw while walking this dog at the park this morning.
2e2 whooping cough cases currently in my part of Washington state. There’s been a vaccine for that for 80 years.
There used to be a story about turkeys being so dumb that they would stand in the rain, looking up, until they actually drowned. Now I believe that the turkeys were taking a principled stand for their personal freedom.
… just because you’re on their side, it doesn’t mean they’re on your side. They don’t want to prevent AI slop from reducing your wages, they just want to make sure it’s their AI slop puts you on the breadline.
— Penguin Random House, AI, and writers' rights., Cory Doctorow, @pluralistic@mamot.fr
Blue states should play “constitutional hardball."
Provide succor to “medical professionals, teachers, doctors and anyone with a trans kid,” says Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr.
All over America, families are despairing of their lives in red states. Whether you’re worried that you or someone you love might need to terminate a pregnancy, or you’re worried about gender-affirming care for you or a loved one, you can put your worries to rest in a blue state. Same goes for nurses and doctors who are worried they can’t do medicine unless it accords with the imaginary dictates of Bronze Age prophets as claimed by pencil-neck Hitler wannabe Bible-thumper with a private jet and a face from Walmart. Fill the blue states with great schools, libraries and hospitals, and invite everyone who wants to do their job in a free country to come and work at ‘em. Line every state border with abortion and mifepristone clinics, and set up billboards advertising the quality of life, the jobs, and the freedom in blue state America.
…
Dems have to get over their fear of “states’ rights” and start playing state-level hardball. This doesn’t mean escalating cruelty. Quite the contrary: every cruel measure enacted as red state red meat is a chance for blue states to extend a kindness, and capture even more of the best, brightest and kindest of the nation, creating a race to the top that Republicans can only win by abandoning their performative cruelty and corruption.
During our last time going out to lunch before the pandemic, my dad (who was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust and spent years living in the Polish forest and fighting the Nazis) expressed his dismay that Americans weren’t taking the threat to our country seriously enough. I suggested that while most Americans were concerned, they didn’t see the Trump era as being that ominous because they assumed the kinds of things that happened in his life could never happen here. My dad stopped walking, looked at me, and asked, “You think vhen I vas a kid any of us thought it could happen there?”
Surgeons are wearing Apple Vision Pro headsets into the operating room. $3,500 is wicked expensive for a consumer device, but it’s dirt cheap for medical equipment. Other vendors are making specialized devices.