Notices by Bill (bmacdonald94@hostux.social)

A week after the election, we published
"Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink",
an open-source handbook for building nationwide opposition to the coming authoritarian takeover.

The first step: total opposition to Trump’s Project 2025.

🔸Slow the Senate
🔸Make congressional Republicans work for Democratic votes
🔸Break the norms around congressional collegiality
🔸Work with the new surge in anti-Musk, anti-Trump grassroots energy

Together, we are the opposition, and this is our republic
—if we can keep it.

This is the part where we keep it.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/how-to-organize-our-way-out-of-the-trump-musk-putsch/

@Profpatsch @DarkAthena @johnnyprofane1 @bmacDonald94 @actuallyautistic @actuallyadhd
I can find only two references to autism:

"Autism spectrum disorders had the highest prevalence in high-income countries, including the United States, in 2021. Similarly, autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, and multiple sclerosis are more commonly diagnosed in high-income areas such as Europe and North America. Overall, the global comparison data demonstrates that the health of Americans is on an alarming trajectory that requires immediate action."

This looks like it is comparing ASD with auto-immune diseases*, and is something that needs to be prevented and/or treated.

"Autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States — a staggering increase from rates of 1 to 4 out of 10,000 children identified with the condition during the 1980s."

No mention of changes to diagnostic criteria or any change in how the condition is viewed.

Soon after this is said:

"This poses a dire threat to the American people and our way of life."

A bit of an aside, but I find it interesting that that sentence is immediately followed by:

"Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores."

Is that how we're measuring the quality of people's lives, their ability to enter the military?

* I initially typoed this as "auti-immune disease". Yikes. 😬

@murdoc @Profpatsch @DarkAthena @johnnyprofane1 @bmacDonald94 @actuallyautistic @actuallyadhd

Re: autism spectrum disorders. I just wanted to remind people that, in many lower income countries, kids are simply not diagnosed. Partly because of the standards of health systems but also because many other cultures interpret neurodivergence differently. Often it's simply not pathologized.

I taught for 18 years in Vietnam and none of my autistic students had formal diagnoses.

@Iva852 ~ You are. It is warming up here, should be in the 27C. range and sunny. I am fine. and I return the hug.

(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((Iva)))))))))))))))))))))))

❤️

Flirting is something I generally keep several light years' distance from. It has the potential to turn into something really weird and uncomfortable *fast*, especially when the other person is a guy.

So, I mostly just don't. 99.9999% of the time.

Another discussion just reminded me of this story...

@Iva852 ~ You spoil me dear friend. ❤️

@Iva852 Thank you my dear friend. It was delightful to run across your beautiful poem on my special day. Much love to you and your beautiful family. ❤️ 😍

This takes place in the setting of my chosen family here in MN a number of years ago.

An elderly person in the family (born in the 1930's) had a technical question about her computer and I and her grandchild were sitting in the room with her when she asked it.

She ignored me and directed her question toward her grandchild. This happened for 2 reasons:

1) She thought their grandchild was a guy.
2) Her grandchild was quite tech savvy. (But so am I, as a former IT person and she knows this.)

I feel like it really wouldn't take long before we'd be back where we started, competing amongst ourselves.

This thought comes from someone saying job applicants shouldn't have to tailor resumes and write cover letters.

Ideally not. Say we did away with that. Thank goodness.

But, of course people *would* keep tailoring their CVs to have a better chance. Maybe formal cover letters would be gone, but these applicants would write a nice email to go with their applications.

Now, we are down to quoting Mike Pence, who seems to be one of the few who has the courage to directly challenge trump.

"
Mr. President, Ukraine did not “start” this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The Road to Peace must be built on the Truth. 🇺🇸🇺🇦
"

Let's keep spreading this message.
#Politics
7/n

There is no such thing as privacy-respecting advertising. At least not for any sane definition of "respect"

The arguments are technically nuanced, but I went into it a little a while back: https://mastodon.social/@sarahjamielewis/113199184170538484

Raising money is pointless if doing so compromises the values you claim to stand for.

Really sad to see Mozilla committed to such a dystopian vision of the future of the web.

"While Firefox remains the core of what we do, we also need to take steps to diversify: investing in privacy-respecting advertising to grow new revenue in the near term; developing trustworthy, open source AI to ensure technical and product relevance in the mid term"

source: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growth-planning-updates/

@johnnyprofane1 @bmacDonald94 @actuallyautistic @actuallyadhd Apologies - I read the WH post but did not see specific wording on autism. Would someone please help me find it?

@stephanie @DarkAthena ~ Thank you. Good info. 💕

I received my new meds this morning so I did some more research into how and when to start the antidepressant switch (as my doctor told me nothing useful).

... We really don't know much of anything about this, do we? It's really quite frustrating.

I really need to go back to work soon so 🤷🏻♀️

So I read the Executive Order about renaming Gulf of Mexico: "Secretary of the Interior shall rename as the “Gulf of America” the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north & northwest by the States of TX, LA, MS, AL & FL & extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico & Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico."
This map shows that this only renames the area of the continental shelf as shown in light blue on this map. Google & Apple could at least get this right!

"Trump did not run on a promise to unleash an unelected billionaire to slash-and-burn through the government, firing tens of thousands of employees and arbitrarily canceling contracts and federal programs. And even if he had, that still wouldn’t make it legal."

~ Liz Dye

#Musk #Trump #destruction #chaos #FederalGovernment #employment #workers #economy #children #immigrants
/11

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/elon-musk-trump-breaking-laws-democracy

I have a self-imposed moral dilemma.

In autumn, I bought a Mac Mini and a Dell 27" monitor to go with it. The computer and monitor support multiple monitors. I want a second one to go with it.

I can buy it on #Amazon (where I bought the first one) for $434, which is $160 LESS than Dell and still considerably less than other sellers. This is a kickass price.

The dilemma: I'm challenging myself to go a whole year without buying ANYTHING on Amazon and I've been doing great so far.

What do I do?

Damn.

I pulled the trigger. It arrives next week. I feel like a failure, but wow! Saving more than $100 is not something I can feel ashamed about.