Notices by Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐 (gcvsa@mstdn.plus), page 2

There is no system of national identification in the US. We have a de facto hodgepodge of state-issued driver's licenses, state (and/or municipally) issued birth certificates, Social Security numbers (which by law are not supposed to be identification documents), US passports, and immigration/naturalization papers.

In all of these categories, there are Americans who do not have and have never had one or more of these documents.

I am a natural born citizen of the United States. Like most natural born citizens, the only actual legal proof of citizenship I possess, because that is how it is normally done, under the provisions of Amendment XIV, is my birth certificate.

It is not customary in the US for people to carry around their birth certificate, and as I've already pointed out, police can and will simply claim that my documents "appeared to be false identification", even if I did carry it.

The reality is, it would take a generation or more to establish a national identity system, if we even wanted to do that—AND WE SHOULD NOT WANT TO DO THAT MUCH LESS ACTUALLY DO IT.

The reality is, they will simply round up whoever they think doesn't fit the Aryan Nazi model, "and let God sort them out".

Selective and discretionary enforcement is one of the greatest dangers to Liberty imaginable.

Rescinding birthright citizenship under Amendment XIV would require the government to definitively establish the citizenship status of all 330+ million people in America.

This is obviously an impossible task, but the techie douchebag billionaires and their subordinate tech worshippers behind the Trump Administration (Musk, Thiel, etc, and their little douchebag hacker boys) want to believe they can do all this by computer, and they don't care about any errors.

Looks like we all need to find replacements for #Firefox and #Thunderbird.

I'm trying out LibreWolf on Windows, but what can replace Thunderbird that's cross platform (Win, Mac, Linux, at least)? SeaMonkey, maybe? Is that independent from Mozilla?

#Mozilla seems intent on profit at the expense of users.

Because racism. That's why. In America, if the answer isn't "because money", then it is almost certainly, "because racism".

#USpol

The obvious lesson that we need to learn from this is that the only reason the American system of government has survived as long as it has is not because of the Constitutional separation of powers, but because of the strength of broad social norms that mitigated the tendency of people intent on destroying the government from within from being elected, in the first place.

We can see this now, because there are no legal or constitutional constraints on what the Trump Administration is doing.

@ploum don't kid yourself, they will replace you with AI as soon as it's cheaper to do so.

@youronlyone This is why when I went to visit my family in the PH in 1999, I brought an MSR Waterworks II filter system. Only, I didn't actually end up using it that much. I probably ended up drinking bottled water most of the time (if I wasn't drinking Coca-Cola or San Miguel, lol), but it's been 25 years, so it's hard to remember.

@youronlyone OMG, I just watched the trailer, and it looks amazing!

@youronlyone I played for a short time when I live in Seattle, but I moved back east in 2014, and there wasn't much activity here, so I dropped it in favor of LoveLive! School Idol Festival.

@youronlyone I honestly didn't even know Ingress was still operational.

One thing the Internet desperately needs is a government regulation requiring mail forwarding upon the closure of an account.

I would really like to close my Google accounts, but there's no easy way for me to continue to get mail from people who may only have my Gmail address, if I decide to close that account.

I'm very glad I figured out how to print label in Japanese from my Brother P-Touch, so I can finally replace the romaji labels on my spice jars. Also in the background at upper left is a sealed, unopened 1960's vintage bottle of Ajinomoto ハイミー I bought via Yahoo! Japan Auctions and paid a bazillion yen to have shipped to me in the US.

I didn't even know Hi Mi existed, until I spotted the jar on the table during breakfast in this film from 1966. It took a bit, but I tracked it down via some Ajinomoto company history documents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvoZjbp9R1w

I actually meant to open the bottle and use the dispenser, but once I got it, I couldn't bear to break the 60 year old seal.

I also got a 1 Kg bag of Hi Mi in that order, but I'm still using up my regular Ajinomoto MSG, as well, so I've barely put a dent in the Hi Mi.

@youronlyone Here's another:

https://www.intotheminds.com/blog/en/scam-dmca-copyright-infringement-notice/

@youronlyone Scam.

https://www.aqueous-digital.co.uk/articles/this-latest-dubai-sims-link-building-scam-is-bound-to-fail/

The biggest logistical difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is that the Democratic coalition is extremely fragile, and rarely coheres, while the Republican coalition rarely breaks ranks.

Probably the best we can hope for in the new Congress is infighting caused by the most insane members of the Republican Party. Do not dare to hope that less extreme Republicans will have a change of heart.

@youronlyone I honestly did not know the Fediverse existed until 2022. I hesitated to start an account for a few months, but eventually Elon Musk was confirmed as the new owner of Twitter in Oct 2022, so I shut down my accounts there, and started this one in Dec 2022.