Notices by Kim Scheinberg (kims@mas.to), page 3

It has been a question over the last few days as to whether we can entice the Harris campaign to join Mastodon. I think Heidi's efforts on #MastodonforHarris have been phenomenal

But the questions we need to reckon with are why Mastodon is such an inhospitable place for Black people and what we can do to change that

@mekkaokereke has been talking about this for more than a year and if you're not following him, you should be

This is a good starting place
https://mas.to/@mekkaokereke@hachyderm.io/112835764192836694

A friend just texted asking who the most influential person in the Dem party currently is. I said I had no idea, but I'd bet the most consequential right now is Marc Elias @marcelias

And I'm relieved to learn that he said this an hour ago:

"Before the media gets rolling, let me be clear: The Democratic nominee for president will be on all 50 state ballots. There is no basis for any legal challenge. Period."

@ai6yr @mattblaze

It's pretty f'n maddening that this is the image of Joe Biden getting out of The Beast and onto AF1

He's got a positive Covid diagnosis, and neither he nor any of the SS with him are masked. It isn't just bad optics, it's a level of callousness that I hadn't previously ascribed to him

Starbucks is sponsoring the RNC
Musk has committed $45m/mo to help Trump

I respect that most people don't view being on twitter as some kind of political/ethical breach. I also get that there are people who are conflicted, who "know" they should leave twitter but "can't" because reasons. (Too much social capital, FOMO, abusive relationships take an average of 7 tries to end, etc)

But if you're advocating *on twitter* to boycott Starbucks because of their RNC support?

Your math isn't mathing

My best hope for how Trump loses?

Having him back in the spotlight (and relieved of All-Biden's-Age-All-The-Time coverage) will remind people JUST HOW FUCKING EXHAUSTING it is having Trump suck up every last bit of oxygen every minute of every day

I know maybe 25% of the population loves that he fuels their anger and gives a sense of righteousness to their misplaced need for vengeance. But for most of us, he's physically and emotionally draining

Here's hoping the fatigue gets people to vote

This quote from Zaslav, CEO of WB (parent company of CNN) reminds me that it's time for my annual reread of Dorothy Thompson's 1941 essay, "Who Goes Nazi?"
I can't recommend it enough

"It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. [...] I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers."
https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

NYT is able to muster up five editorials suggesting that a poor debate performance is reason to cede the nomination

Can someone please find for me all the editorials suggesting that 34 felony convictions are a reason to cede anything at all?

Ticketmaster just alerted me that Vicki Lawrence is performing in Vegas this summer. My first reaction (given that I watched her play an old lady on TV when I was 6) was, "She's still alive?"

And my next thought was, "I wonder if she'll sing 'The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia'"

It was such a jarring thing to learn that the nice lady from the Carol Burnett show was the same woman singing about how they'd never find the body of her brother's ex-wife, the one she murdered

Back in the 90s, I had a friend who jumped through many hoops to get a carry permit in NYC. He bought a gun and started carrying regularly on his subway ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan. He sold it a few months later

I asked him why he went through all that trouble only to sell it so soon. He said,

"The longer I carried it, the more I started itching for an excuse to use it"

I think about that a lot

"Washington man fatally shoots 17-year-old who had BB gun, says he 'had a duty to act' "

[With a hat tip to Jericho Brown]

To the Republicans suddenly obsessed with the sheer unfairness of Trump (potentially) not being allowed to vote for himself in November:

PLEASE RUSH LEGISLATION TO RESTORE VOTING RIGHTS FOR ALL FELONS

GUILTY
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34-0

@inthehands
It's this bit that haunts me all these years later:

"As Lili Loofbourow wrote of the Kavanaugh incident in Slate, adolescent male cruelty toward women is a bonding mechanism, a vehicle for intimacy through contempt. The white men in the lynching photos are smiling not merely because of what they have done, but because they have done it together."

"intimacy through contempt" was a gut punch because it described the basis of too many of my friendships

It rewrote my address book

Nikki Haley literally autographing artillery shells in Israel

Whatever one's feelings about what's happening over there, and however much one can rationalize away the "unfortunate reality of collateral damage," the sheer bloodthirst on display here should make anyone ill

One life lesson that has taken me far too long to learn:

The first time someone makes you think, “Remind me never to get on your bad side”?

That’s also the moment you should have zero interest in being on their good side

The best thing is to remove yourself from their orbit, as quickly and inconspicuously as possible

@malwaretech
I was thinking just this morning about how much time I, who had never seen a command line before, spent learning rn and then trn because I wanted to read the local panix newsgroups.

It seems like it's usually a convergence of "if the content is interesting enough..." while simultaneously lowering the barriers to entry.

I just left an estate planning meeting and, dear god, if most people knew how easy (and legal) it is for rich people to essentially pay no taxes, there’d be riots every day

I literally had to step out into the parking lot and take a bunch of deep breaths when she described “crummy trusts”

Also, lawyers look at you funny when you say you want to obey the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law

The end of late stage capitalism can’t come soon enough

Naomi Klein in Jewish Currents:

"It's not just Israel that wants security w/o peace or justice. There are iron domes, bubbles of security all over this grossly unequal fast-warming world. Every rich nation is fortressing their borders with ever more barbaric tools—saws in the buoys in the Rio Grande, barges in the UK bringing people to Rwanda—and many of these countries, Modi's India, have been buying tech & knowhow from Israel who since 9-11 has been openly talking about security w/o peace 1/2

@pluralistic

I spent 5+ years as a billionaire's wordsmith, which meant knowing him intimately enough to write in his voice.

I think the thread running through most of them is not a belief in their own basic goodness but rather contempt for everyone else, including and especially their peers. Expressing that contempt with plausible deniability was part of my (usually) unspoken mandate.

Contempt and duper's delight. Those were the last thrills once $$ reached a point of diminishing returns.

After giving us prospective jurors a 90-minute civics lesson which included dissecting the Preamble of the Constitution and reading aloud from news articles about Bush and Obama appearing for jury duty, the judge tells us the one thing he most strongly advocates to change:

He believes that since all jurors are judges, they should be issued black robes to wear for the duration of the trial

I did not ask if he also believes the juror per diem should reflect that of a judge’s salary

Props to the judge

He just said unprompted that per diems should be $200/day minimum to allow for greater participation