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[Millie_Fink]

Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters from an American"

Not sure if this is the right topic or not but reading this just keeps bringing me back to the unstoppable “shower thoughts” that started going through my head this morning about the constant and blatantly obvious rhetorical traps I’ve been seeing used lately throughout MSM. Someone complains about what Musk/DOGE is doing. “So, what you’re saying you don’t want to find waste, fraud, and abuse in government? No wonder you guys lost! What about George Soros?” Someone complains how Musk is usurpi…

[MerelyGifted]

Elon Musk Destroys Everything

What does this headline even is supposed to mean, incendiary devices “discovered” at Tesla dealership? They openly display and sell them to the public.

[SallyM]

Whatchya Workin' On, O Creatives?

I usually get help from a friendly neighborhood woodpecker, but then again I’m basically a Disney princess.

[Catsidhe]

Elon Musk Destroys Everything

It’s a classic supervillain thing is to have a game in your office so that you can use it as a metaphor to talk about your evil plans. Chess, go, poker. But Musk knows those games are stupid because they’re so simple that there’s no way to win except by being better than the other player. Diablo matches his style much better because you can pay someone else to level up your character and then pretend their achievements are your own.

[SallyM]

Fall of the Fourth Estate: A Critique of Mass Media

I remember in school when first learning about WWII, thinking, “How could the people of Germany have let this happen?” I no longer wonder about that. I wish I still lived in a world where I wondered about that. I didn’t really need that question answered in such a first hand way.

[MerelyGifted]

Random Silly Grins

“Knock, knock” “Who’s there?” “Ah” “Ah who?” “Werewolves of London”

[SallyM]

Election Fallout

It’s not a change that’s worth thousands of innocent people dying an tens of thousands suffering needlessly. I agree, but to say so in response to that article is to ignore the author’s main point — that there’s more to western aid than helping to alleviate the suffering and prevent the deaths of people in “underdeveloped” countries. The author does not say that that western aid should end as abruptly as Tramp is ending USAID efforts, salutary and otherwise. He does say that the demise of th…

[SallyM]

The goddamn Trump Administration

Here’s a website which generates musk-oid demanded “five things last week” office-speak for federal workers linky; Here’s the result for “Quantity Surveying”: • Conducted cost analysis and prepared detailed estimates for ongoing projects. • Reviewed and validated contractor invoices and progress claims. • Monitored project budgets and identified potential cost-saving opportunities. • Collaborated with project teams to ensure compliance with financial and contractual requirements. • Updated…

[SallyM]

Possibly untrue science news

Interesting research, but there’s a huge difference in being able to predict a slight seasonal or cyclical variation in earthquake activity and being able to predict any given specific earthquake. My wife (a geophysicist who specializes in this kind of thing) has convinced me that will never be possible. Teeny tiny earthquakes are happening constantly, and they’re initiated at very small points on a fault miles underground. Even if you could magically accurately predict each one of those that w…

[Millie_Fink]

The goddamn Trump Administration

Alito is stunned the USSC won’t let his mad king do whatever the fuck he wants. Alito is so full of shit he doesn’t need bribes; he can just sell it to farmers and be richer than Musk. The very, very first principle of this case is: the contractors legally spent the funds in accordance with the terms of the contract. Legally, (and per the 14th Amendment), the government is obligated to pay these expenses. Second, and Alito well knows, is that there is a procedure for recovering misspent funds…

[SallyM]

So now we need a measles thread

Yes, that pretty much sums up their issues with science in general, “the answers keep changing.” Because, yes, the better we understand it, the better our answers are. They. Do. Not. Care. They want simple, obvious, easy-to-understand and most of all, non-challenging answers that never change. Like the ones MAGA and Elno offer. Correct is not one of their criteria.

[SallyM]

The goddamn Trump Administration

“At risk,” “trauma,” “mental health,” “gender,” man, the vast majority of medical literature is about to vanish, isn’t it? That list should absolutely terrify anyone who gives a shit about science or research. Of course, most of those folks already understand this, and the MAGAts only care when their own personal faces get eaten. FAFO is impacting more and more of his acolytes, though. Maybe there is a tipping point? The fatal flaw on the right has always been overreaching, and these asshat…

[SallyM]

Weird, odd stuff

Maybe she was waiting for the Win95 update via 3.5" floppy disk to fail mid-way. Again.

[SallyM]

Google, Meta, X and all the Tech Bros

I don’t think a left version of techno-optimism makes any sense because the problems don’t have to do with things people can’t do, they have to do with things they shouldn’t do. Right now the biggest obstacle to abundance is that everything we accomplish keeps being stolen and turned against the rest of us. I mean, the most obvious place where technology might help is clean energy – and yet even there the biggest limit to progress is that oil companies keep sabotaging it. We could use better wa…

[SallyM]

Healthcare PSAs and BSAs

RFK is in a battle to the death with science. I’m rooting for science.

[SallyM]

Mathematical jokes

Nothing rhymes with orange. Nothing rhymes with purple. Therefore, by induction, orange rhymes with purple.

[Murgatroyd]

[SallyM]

Possibly untrue science news

It is my considered option that our universe is something that a bored teenager in some higher dimension cobbled together at the last minute for their school’s science fair.

[Millie_Fink]

Healthcare Deform

This a long, twisted tale of a hospital takeover gone wrong - a healthcare tale as old as 2010 (when mergers & acquisitions accelerated). A non-profit system was purchased by a for-profit company, hospital services were gradually reduced, facilities were closed, and now the purchaser has declared bankruptcy. Even though the sale happened 8 years ago (and reductions/closures and attempts to sell facilities have been making news for the past 4 years), now the public outcry is on FB. I don’t kno…

[SallyM]

The goddamn Trump Administration

This makes sense to me. I’m sure that for some people living under an authoritarian regime would be boring and safe and maybe even nice. The privileged, the elite, the ones who think they are elite. But only some few people. A lot of people would be persecuted and die. Injustice would be rampant. Everyone else would be exhausted trying to toe the line, afraid all the time, and anxious because they could at, any time, have their entire life destroyed. If not outright taken.