jwood718

[jwood718]

So this ad popped up on the dash today:

and I thought "immortal robotic body?" HA! Hahahahaha. That thing'll work as long as the company that built it is around to support it!

First-off, it'd be like one of the new toasters: it has to maintain a link to the internet so that the company can monitor your daily living, which is maybe OK until they decide you aren't paying enough. Prices go through the roof after a 90 day introductory period.

Then, after 5 maybe 6 years, parts start going bad, and because you have no right to repair the chassis you're now riding around in, you're at the mercy of the company's tech support, and having someone come to your location to make physical upgrades will have to be scheduled with a 2 or 3 week lead-time -- unless you're willing to pay even more for express service, which will cut down the time to 2 - 3 days. In the meantime, good luck working around whatever isn't working.

Then, after like 15 years, you get a message that the company's gone bust and there will no longer be support for the operating system. You'll have 24 hours to get downloaded into something else or - le poof! - you're offline permanently. If you're lucky, someone will come along with aftermarket support; if not, you'll be a human mind stuck in a silicone matrix and nothing you can do about it: no internet, no messages, no mobility, just staring through increasingly darkening vision as the battery runs down, facing the possibility that you'll be awake but aware of absolutely nothing locked away in a block of useless plastic.

[jwood718]

Indeed, it is quite wide open for the taking.

civic duty

[jwood718]

One of the largest political rallies in Washington DC was the Klan's, marching in August of 1925 at 50,000 strong, with what may have been 20,000 spectators. They held political offices in numerous states, and held sway regardless -- no one wanted to cross them. There were more Klan members in the North than South.

Many of them would go on to support the American Nazi Party during the 1930s, after the Klan's internecine fighting and corruption had given membership a sour taste. Nazis in the US were on-board with Hitler's rise, and saw the NASP as something not only to emulate but to join forces with (and recall that Hitler and his cronies were very much enamoured of Jim Crow and our eugenic movement).

The prevalence of this kind of thinking does have a home in this nation; Rachel Maddow even named her book about the pro-Hitlerites Prequel. NPR's 1A has been doing a Monday morning segment since the election called "If You Can Keep It," part of a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin and referring to our republic and its democracy: maybe it's not great, but it's better than the alternatives -- if you can keep it.

The whole shebang has been called "the American experiment," and no one knows how the experiment turns out, but the option of it ending badly is an option.

There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.

I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.

As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.

The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.

The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.

As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.

I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.

The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.

I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.

I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.

All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.

I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.

My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.

If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:

It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.

Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.

Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.

Sources:

• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text

• Betches News on Instagram (screencaps)

[jwood718]

Nice.

A cartoon for #worldbookday (coming on Thursday 6th) for this week’s Guardian Books.

[jwood718]

That's a pretty good summation.

The analogy could be extended to many other things besides entrepreneurialism: "The American Dream lives on" indeed.

[jwood718]

awesome

[jwood718]

[jwood718]

And as such is a great illustration of the generational circular reinforcement of certain rules concerning "masculine normativity," accompanied by all your other favorite "-ities" and the "-ism" that comes with them.

[jwood718]

Yeah, that's kinda cool, but that's an AI generated image.

This was Las Vegas in 1947.

[jwood718]

1996.

Jeezus, it still tracks so well.

[jwood718]

Yeah.

[jwood718]

As long as they're available, and they are available from a variety of retailers, one might imagine people wearing the Independent's insignia

on a pin, a magnet on a car, or whatever, as a way of stating where one stands vis a vis the current administration. Red Caps vs Brown Coats? Anyone asking about it can get an easy "safe" answer: "I just really like Firefly."

Half joking.

[jwood718]

Elsewhere: NPR's Steve Inskeep talks with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Among other topics: AOC, Constitutional rights, and the Dept. of Justice

"Ocasio-Cortez insists that she still favors a path to citizenship. And she publicly feuded with Tom Homan, President Trump's border czar, after she held an online know-your-rights seminar for people who feared being confronted by immigration agents.

When threatened with investigation, she challenged the Justice Department to try it.

Homan told Fox News that he had asked the Justice Department if she was violating the law by trying 'to educate people how they evade law enforcement.'

'I was informing all of my constituents of their constitutional protections and in particular, their constitutional protections against illegal search and seizure,' Ocasio-Cortez told NPR. She said she intended to put a question to the Justice Department herself: 'Well, there is a member of the Trump administration who is threatening and seeks to open an inquiry. And are you going to do it?'

After the interview, the Democrat sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, which she shared with NPR. 'I write to request clarity on whether the Department of Justice has yielded to political pressure and attempts to weaponize the agency against elected officials whose speech they disagree with.'"

Nice.

Full story with audio button.

[jwood718]

enderglace added: "Clearly that means cishet is not default at all lmao"

Obviously we're all caterpillars.

Well, I'm not a caterpillar 'cause I wasn't exposed to Carle's book at a young age.

However, it's curious to me that I never wanted to eat fried worms, despite an entire book entitled How To Eat Fried Worms was read to me in class.

I also was not inspired to be a Reagan republican even though we had to watch his inauguration in a junior high gym.

[jwood718]

Hmm.

"Shouting match?" I think not. Hearing BBC World Service (or anyone else) refer to the Trump and Vance theatre of absurd cruelty episode on Zelenskyy as "a shouting match" is a sorry, sorry case of "both sides-ism" that is followed by too much media coverage.

Fortunately, there seem to be many around the world (certainly in Europe) who understand that how Trump/Vance acted was risible and childish. That Zelenskyy has now been memed as "leader of the free world" is apt.

It's not hard to "read between the lines" that The Orange One really wanted Zelenskyy to grovel and kiss the ring, to act the obsequious sycophant. Trump wanted a bulwark for his sense of self-worth. Vance apparently saw his chance to play the sycophant and get it on camera. If only Prime Minister Musk had been in the room, he could have piled-on, too!

[jwood718]

Not my usual, but I like it.

[jwood718]

"I am Mrs. Olivia Robert, a highly placed official of the Inland Revenue Service (IRS). where I have been assigned to take responsibility for your funds remittance to you without further delay."

So begins a spam e-mail that landed in my Outlook. It really goes maximum verbosity, including entreating me to not pay any attention to any other people attempting to give me money!

But the best part is the last, where they want to really know who I am:

1. Full Name

2. Residential Address

3. Age

4. Occupation

5. Direct Telephone Numbers

6. A Copy of Your Identification

7. Your Bank details.

Regards,

Mrs. Olivia Robert.

Inland Revenue Service (IRS)

Head Department Washington D.C

Managing Director.

"Inland Revenue Service." Wow.