I feel like I'm seeing less and less #alttext on images that cross my timeline, and it's not good, y'all. Please don't exclude our visually impaired friends. Thanks!

Y'ALL

I just saw what might possibly be the most godawful ugly vehicle iI have ever laid eyes on in my entire life:

a shiny gold swasticar cybertruck.

I was driving, so I couldn't take a picture, and I will forever be dismayed. But it literally made me exclaim "Oh. My. GAWD" out loud.

It's like a 1984-style refrigerator went out and had a fling with a gold-plated Dumpster and this was the misbegotten offspring.

Goddammit Marty why didn't you and Doc get that book back from Biff

When the 12yo is having a rough morning & cannot make herself get out of the car when we pull up to #school, we try our very best to talk it out, and when that doesn't work, we drive away from school & go to a new-to-us used #bookstore & have #coffee & peruse #books for an hour before driving back to school & trying again, this time successfully.

She was 2 1/2 hours late to school.
I'm teaching her that caring for her emotional health is more important than conformity.

#safety
#6thGraderLife

The goal of the companies who run AIs is to

1. get us all to use AI until the point where

2. we're dependent on AI, then

3. remove all access to AI and

4. grant the privilege of use only to those who pay a monthly fee,

5. which will periodically rise

6. while the service becomes worse and worse.

It'll be enshittification of enshittification.

enshittiception

@grammasaurus @GottaLaff Pelosi's statement proclaims two things loudly and clearly:

1. If the craven cowards have a leader, she is it.

2. She doesn't understand what "political" means. She has made a career of it, but she doesn't know what it means. EVERYTHING HUMANS DO IS POLITICAL, because everything each of us does affects the choices we all make together as we live together in the "polis." So hell yeah the choice to impeach Trump has ALWAYS been political. And so is the choice not to.

@alice A UPS worker recently asked me, "Would you like to round up to feed the homeless? Before you answer that"--he lowered his voice--"you should know that before your donation gets to the point of buying food for anybody, first UPS takes their cut, then [organization] takes their cut, then [something I don't remember] takes their cut, so in the end these donations are practically worthless. Don't ever round up. Just give someone on the street a dollar. It'll do way more good."

Good advice.

@cy Most of them probably, yes. But if you're on the receiving end, it doesn't really matter if they're bits or people -- the emotional impact is the same.

It's like how people are getting into "relationships" with AI and considering an AI chatbot to be a romantic partner. The "partner" is automated, but the emotional response in the person on the other end is very real.

We live in weird, weird times.

"At this rate, Skeletor could be cackling over the nuclear codes with his best pal Lex Luthor and we’d be instantly blasted with podcasts about how the armies of darkness have legitimate concerns."

https://lauriepenny.substack.com/p/what-is-wrong-with-you-people

no one:

no one at all:

no one on this side of the Andromeda Galaxy:

Oklahoma House *passes "Christ Is King" resolution*

me: YE GODS can you people PLEASE stop showing everybody your ass and just DO YOUR FUCKING JOBS

https://kfor.com/news/oklahoma-legislature/oklahoma-house-passes-christ-is-king-resolution/

#Oklahoma
#OklahomaHouse
#priorities

@aronow YES PLEASE.

And in the spirit of that...

@br00t4c This reminds me of an exchange with spouse & then-6yo over some of my #genealogy research.

_____________

me: aw, here's an error. i have to delete all the Hoos

spouse: who?

me: yes. anna hoo

him: anna who?

me: yes

6yo: but who is she?

me: she is, yes. or was. she's dead

6: who's dead?

me: right

6: anna?

me: yes. anna hoo

6: i don't know!

me: third base!

6: ?

spouse *dies laughing*

"The electorate doesn't want the truth, it wants answers in line with their thinking."

--CJ Cherryh,
THE VINDICATION (Cyteen, 3),
1988

Well, *that* certainly hasn't changed in 36 years. 😑

...If something happens that I can actually do something about, I'll hear about it through the people closest to me. But for my own mental and emotional health, I have to stop doomscrolling.

But Courtney, you ask, can't you avoid doomscrolling but still keep aware of daily headlines?

No, not really. I've tried that, and it doesn't work. Blame addictive tendencies, blame a sick form of escapism, blame whatever. It results in an all-or-nothing I can't seem to break out of.

2/3

Well, I've been mostly not paying attention to "news" for the past two weeks -- one because I was busy with book-publishing, two because I felt so much better emotionally as a result of not doomscrolling.

Over the past 2 days, I've checked back in with the collapse of civilization and see that it is continuing at a breakneck pace, just as expected.

I think I'm done for the foreseeable future. I'm done reading about it all, I'm done doomscrolling about it.

...
1/3

I'm taking care of *my* yard. My gate is closed to the autocrats, oligarchs, fascists, and supporters thereof. My gate is open to anyone who needs refuge from any of those.

In the meantime, I'm tending my yard and adhering to the Spider Robinson Principle:

"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy, increased--thus do we refute entropy."

I'll still be here. But expect a lot more book stuff, writing stuff, reading stuff, and cats.

Love you, fedizens. 🫶🖖

3/3

I wonder if doomscrolling is the opiate of the people

I know that I'm speaking from a position of privileged self-employment, but

if you're in a job where your resistance causes problems for the fascists

BE LIKE LUCY, Y'ALL.

"I can only assume that I will be fired, but at least this will do even just a smidge more than just shutting up and being a sheep."

--Lucy Welch

https://kottke.org/25/03/jd-vance-chastised-by-vermont-snow-reporter

#LucyWelch

Reminder: Donald Trump didn't reveal himself as a thug just this past Friday.

At the very *latest* he revealed himself as a thug on the day he was convicted on 34 felony counts.

He first exposed himself as a thug in 1973.

I held desperate hopes that Zelenskyy would refuse to give Putin what he wanted.

I couldn't imagine that he would, but I also knew the pressures he was going to face today.

And he stood up to them. He gave them nothing. In the face of their puerile, incandescent, narcissistic rage, he gave them nothing.

My respect for that man grew to extravagant proportions today.

#SlavaUkraini, President #Zelenskyy.

@GreenSkyOverMe Thank you for doing that! I was scrolling through comments, hoping someone had gotten to it before I could.

@GossiTheDog