Notices by Michael Busch (michael_w_busch@mastodon.online)

Holding political figures accountable when they commit crimes.

What a concept.

QT Robson Fletcher @robsonfletcher.com
2025 February 18

"Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro was charged on Tuesday in a plot to overturn his 2022 election loss, the office of the country's top prosecutor announced in a legal document released on Tuesday."

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-general-prosecutor-charges-bolsonaro-alleged-coup-plot-2025-02-19/

https://bsky.app/profile/robsonfletcher.com/post/3liijjpyjvk2i

"The Guardian Media Group management wants to feed its reporters' work into an automated plagiarism machine."

It remains way past time to shut down ChatGPT and everything similar.

https://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/2025/feb/14/guardian-media-group-announces-strategic-partnership-with-openai

@whknott@mastodon.social @knud @mekkaokereke @lerxst @OldFartPhil @grumpasaurus

My grandfather still had a German technical dictionary along with the French one from his time in college studying geology just before WWII.

@dpnash @knud @mekkaokereke @lerxst @OldFartPhil @grumpasaurus

Similarly; there is a lot of geology that was first done in German - e.g. both "Triassic" & "Jurassic" come from German, and "Cretaceous" came from French but gets abbreviated "K" from German "Kreide".

But the operator of the account above seems to have confused the obviously false "all science was German" for the true "the Nazis destroyed German science" that is the point of the thread.

So I am done.

@inthehands

I understand the point.

But then I think about the consequences of systems failing: people endangered by degraded weather forecasts, by the power grids destabilizing, by ATC going down, by VA and NIH hospitals not being able to buy supplies.

Which is what happens when arsonists are allowed to mess things up.

51 Republican Senators just voted to kill Americans and many people elsewhere in the world.

If you are represented by them, hold them accountable; USA.

And do not allow RJK Jr. to remain in government.

QT Jan_M_ac @stayinalive2.bsky.social
2025 February 13

Republican Senate did it, they confirmed a man, RFK Jr., who promotes crackpot pseudoscience (nonscience), to head the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Service.
https://bsky.app/profile/stayinalive2.bsky.social/post/3li33zlvjw22w

@inthehands @alfiekohn

Christians doing horrific things and using their religion as a pretext is not hypocrisy - especially when the particular varieties of Christianity concerned have been deliberately constructed to promote white supremacy / misogyny / etc.

I make this point because there is still a pervasive "This person is a Christian so they should be a good person by default" social stereotype; which helps the offenders get away with so many evil things.

#subpost

No, nuclear bombs cannot help with global warming.

You would get nuclear winter followed by UV spring and an accelerated global warming summer.

And I thought we had settled this back in my grandfather's time.

#subpost

No, news outlets, you really do not need to run propaganda for Donald Trump's illegal executive orders on your op-ed pages.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau website has been taken offline: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ .

Yet again, USA:

Require that your members of Congress act immediately to stop this, to hold Elon Musk personally accountable, and to #ImpeachTrump & remove him.

19 US states currently have segregationists as Attorneys General.

Do not let this or anything like it continue, United States. And remove the offenders from office.

QT Nancy Levine Stearns @nancylevinestearns.bsky.social
2025 February 4

"Attorneys General from 19 states have put Costco on notice due to alleged 'discrimination,' stating its diversity policies are discriminatory against people who are not minorities."

https://www.newsweek.com/former-costco-exec-hits-back-dei-criticism-2025323

@inthehands

I really would like there to have been a better DFL candidate to vote for in the primary last year.

At least Tina Smith acknowledges the problems we now face?

As a patient and a parent:

I copied down the adult and pediatric vaccine charts from the CDC website couple of months ago, just in case.

QT BK. Titanji @boghuma.bsky.social
2025 January 31

Remember how I keep telling y'all to stay updated on ALL of your vaccines?
Well the ACIP specific guidance on individual vaccines has been taken down.
Pediatricians and primary care providers use these guidelines EVERYDAY!
www.cdc.gov/acip/

https://bsky.app/profile/boghuma.bsky.social

"To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.

To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.

To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.

To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to.

To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery."

- Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents, 1998

#ImpeachTrump.

QT Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social
2025 January 31

Like not to be glib here, but the answer to all of the "wait can he do this???" stuff is "no", with the remedy of impeachment.

We're living through a constitutional failure not because the constitution permits this, but because it doesn't and congress will not do the thing it demands in response.

https://bsky.app/profile/pwnallthethings.bsky.social/post/3lh2vlt226s2s

This is a reminder to tell your Senators that the lethal liar known as RFK Jr. must not hold any role anywhere in government, United States.

I learned an interesting historical fact recently:

The oldest documented case of Lyme disease is from 5300 years ago; with borrelia infection identified in the body of a person who died on an alpine glacier.

Make sure that piles of rock are not going to fall from the sky.

QT Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social
2025 January 28

Post the amazing science things you have done with federal funding.

https://bsky.app/profile/alexwild.bsky.social/post/3lgtdgz4w3s2c

@EricFielding I have no more information beyond several independent reports of NSF reviewers being told that their panels are canceled.

But there is no reason to do this.

Managers can choose to not follow illegal executive orders.

It is decision season for the NSF's Research Experience for Undergraduates program.

Anywhere that hosts REU students and has its grant up for renewal will now have to decide if they send out offers to students for this year or not.

Just to give one example of the immediate harm from this.