Notices by Michael Busch (michael_w_busch@mastodon.online)

@mekkaokereke

Here in Minnesota; we have a man running to unseat a state judge because said judge refused to let him continue to harass his ex-wife.

Which some voters may miss because the judicial elections are way down the ballot.

So. Yeah.

(Fortunately, almost everyone who does vote there will vote for the incumbent).

@literalgrill @mekkaokereke

If eating a snake; it is better to fillet it rather than make steaks.

But it just tastes like chicken, which is easier to prepare.

No more point than cooking up an alligator (which I have done, but only so that the students at the cooking class could say they had had it).

@GottaLaff @ai6yr

That would be James O'Keefe the fraudster; whose previous activities include trying to bribe people so that he could report the attempted bribe?

https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/james-okeefes-videos-attacking-mail-voting-minnesota-fall-apart-after

Today in rarely-needed parts of the United States Constitution:

"No Person holding any Office shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State."

#UnpackTheCourts , USA

QT New York Magazine
2024 October 31

"Samuel Alito added a knighthood to his résumé, pledging an oath to the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George."
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/justice-alitos-royalist-cosplay.html

Yet again, USA:

#TaxTheRich .

And likewise for everywhere else in the world.

QT The Guardian @guardian
2024 October 31

"An excess of billionaires is destabilising politics – just as academics predicted"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/31/elon-musk-an-excess-of-billionaires-is-destabilising-politics-just-as-academics-predicted

@baldur @inthehands I recently talked with a web developer who had been working on an application for recording biological lab values.

Their group was unaccountably told to try using ChatGPT.

They stopped when it immediately inserted impossible values into the data tables.

Is #Starlink designed to provide only a small number of users satellite internet at a steep premium? Yes.

Is #Starlink making a mess of low orbit and the upper atmosphere? Yes.

Is #Starlink incompetently designed and being hacked by organized crime? Also yes.

QT UNODC

"Despite Starlink use being strictly monitored and, in some cases, restricted through geofencing, organized crime groups appear to have found ways around existing security protocols"

https://www.unodc.org/roseap/uploads/documents/Publications/2024/TOC_Convergence_Report_2024.pdf

@inthehands Actual GOP fundraising ("WinRed" or similar) or scammers pretending to be such fundraising?

I ask because the DFL and other Democratic fundraising texts I have gotten have been greatly outnumbered by scammers pretending to be fundraising for one campaign or another.

@jdnicoll @nyrath I once worked out a sequence of events that would destroy the Moon and melt Earth's crust and parts of the upper mantle.

It requires millions of hydrogen bombs; several hundred years; and destabilizing a large section of the asteroid belt.

Let's not do that.

@cheddarcrisp @inthehands It continues to be striking, although I have long since stopped being surprised, to witness a group of mostly self-identified atheists re-invent very specific varieties of Christianity but with "AI" in place of a god.

(Eric Schmidt is Jewish; but the lines he is using in that interview are right out of the LessWrong apocalyptic AI cult, which is a group of people who say they are atheists imitating messianic end-times Christianity.)

@inthehands My only suggestion is lots of sunblock.

@JackEric @bconoboy @mekkaokereke There are places in the USA where people voting in person need to wait hours to vote.

This is part of a pattern of racist voter suppression.

In Georgia in 2020; median waiting time was 51 minutes in the precincts with the highest fraction of Black voters and 9 minutes in those with the highest fraction of white voters: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924527679/why-do-nonwhite-georgia-voters-have-to-wait-in-line-for-hours-too-few-polling-pl .

The Georgia Republican party engineered that and then tried to criminalize giving people water & snacks in line.

A disaster occurs.

Some self-identified "preppers" imagine everyone will immediately start fighting one another.

Meanwhile, in reality, I read about everyone doing things from evacuating to search & rescue with boats and helicopters; distributing supplies by foot and bicycle and mule; and surveying and communicating by satellite and drone and ham radio.

And I am reminded of Rebecca Solnit's 2009 "A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster".

I just encountered commentary where someone reacted to hurricane devastation in Asheville, North Carolina, 400 kilometers from the nearest coast, with "this is why people should move further inland".

That is entirely unhelpful.

And I also read reports of semiconductor manufacturing being disrupted by this; just like drug manufacturing was disrupted after Hurricane Maria.

In case anyone still wants to pretend that climate-change-caused disasters in one place somehow does not matter everywhere.

@feld @mekkaokereke On this I have lately learned from @sarahtaber , who is also running for North Carolina Agriculture Commissioner to address some of it.

(And good luck to her and everyone else in the state right now.)

@GottaLaff @inthehands

It is no longer surprising; but it remains striking to me that the MNGOP takes the position that their supporters should have no say in electing POTUS.

Because they know that Republican candidates for the last 25 years have become POTUS only because of the electoral college, but #Minnesota has gone only for Democratic candidates for 50 years.

@gwynnion @mekkaokereke I am reminded of how I sometimes encounter people calling for "political diversity".

By which they never mean the range of political opinions from classical liberalism to anarcho-socialism advocated by the people in my social media feed.

@inthehands @wdlindsy I learn from @rebeccawatson that Richard Dawkins is calling himself a "cultural Christian" now.

As a pretext for sexism, racism, and anti-Muslim bigotry.

The authoritarian pattern is worldwide.

@wdlindsy @inthehands Being a former-Catholic atheist:

It is no longer surprising, but remains striking, to encounter people like J.D. Vance who profess to have once been atheists but then re-associated themselves with the most extreme parts of Catholicism for the sake of bigotry and authoritarianism.

@luckytran

A Trump/Vance administration would largely dismantle food safety; including making food labeling voluntary.

Which might well kill me (celiac).

So. Yeah.