“the Times maintains its stance of faux-neutrality, similar to how its leadership ignored queer Americans during the inception of the AIDS crisis while giving cover to the poor government response. The paper amplifying mainstream anti-trans talking points now acts as though it’s merely documenting the inevitable, rather than watching the seeds it planted bloom into full-blown institutional discrimination.”
Parker Molloy at The Objective
https://objectivejournalism.org/2025/01/legacy-media-helped-create-this-anti-trans-moment-now-theyre-reporting-on-it/
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
The Trump administration is a denial-of-service attack on the United States of America.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Speaking of current events, heard on the radio this morning an analysis that, taking into account the retaliatory tarrifs Mexico and Canada are going to place, Mexico is going to suffer ten times the economic damage that we are, and Canada five times.
And I immediately thought "yeah, but Americans have a lower tolerance for pain than anyone."
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Flight that crashed in DC was coming from Wichita, two to three hours west of here. Flight that crashed in Philly was going to Springfield, Missouri, two hours east of here.
Starting to feel a little... in-between.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
And so it begins...
Official guidance for responding to on-campus ICE enforcement incursions
[#]AcademicLife
[#]AbolishICE
[#]Kansas
https://www.pittstate.edu/president/if-ice-comes-to-campus.html
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
"If, on the other hand, we are going to use history for our pleasure and amusement, for inflating our national ego, and giving us a false but pleasurable sense of accomplishment, then we must give up the idea of history as a science or as an art using the results of science, and admit frankly that we are using a version of historic fact in order to influence and educate the new generation along the way we wish." - W.E.B. Du Bois
https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/w-e-b-du-bois-reflects-purpose-history
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
With Trump and friends breaking every foreign aid and science funding agency and shutting down public health, I'm having a flashback to the 80s Heritage Fund bastards saying that they want "to reduce government to small enough to drown in the bathtub."
There will be nothing left but thought police and grifters when they're done, if we let them.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
With Trump trying to seize, cancel, or redirect every dollar of government spending outside of military-industrial boondoggles, I am having a flashback to Elizabeth Warren's "you didn't build that" speech.
A lot of people are about to find out how much they didn't build or pay for...
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I got crafty with my @nora guy, so we could see the translucency, and the guy could look around.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
My @nora guy arrived!
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Something else I spend so much energy trying to get across to students:
Even in supposedly absolutist systems like Ming and Qing China, emperors spent immense energy playing politics to keep things under control and bolstering their legitimacy to maintain power. And they sometimes failed spectacularly.
"There are not enough jails, not enough policemen, not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people." -- Hubert H. Humphrey
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
How well it worked depended a lot on the character of the emperor and the bravery of the censors. The most infamous example was the Wanli emperor, whose censors kept memorializing about how wrong he was to punish their predecessor for remonstrating him...
As I often say, Republicans do not take positions to do the job, but to use the power to hurt their enemies and enrich their friends. And Inspector Generals with any kind of professionalism and integrity are going to interfere with that.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Trump fired 12 Inspectors General last night; people are calling it a "Friday Night Massacre" but I suspect that it's only the first of many...
I'm reminded of China's imperial censorate (most dynasties had one up through the Qing), a whole branch of government devoted to management and HR and auditing, also responsible for telling the emperor when he was wrong, ethically or morally. Sometimes it worked; sometimes they died: sometimes both.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
[#]PostcardActivism
"Dear President Trump,
There are no good-faith anti-trans arguments. The idea that there are only two distinct sexes is biologically absurd... The idea that there are only two distinct genders is historically absurd... Trying to regulate sex or genders is like trying to repeal the law of gravity, or outlaw sneezing. All you can accomplish is cruelty and suffering, and it damages our national soul.
Please resign,
Jon Dresner"
https://flic.kr/p/2qGvHV9
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
There are no good-faith anti-trans arguments and no acceptable compromises on trans lives.
We must protect each other to survive.
We must listen to each other to avoid doing harm.
We must care about each other to thrive.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I'm listening to some college-era stuff and hit Don Henley's "End of the Innocence"
"O' beautiful, for spacious skies
Now those skies are threatening
They're beating plowshares into swords
For this tired old man that we elected king
Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie..."
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
"Trump would have been convicted on election interference charges, says special counsel"
[#]OccamsRazor
https://kansasreflector.com/2025/01/14/dc/trump-would-have-been-convicted-on-election-interference-charges-says-special-counsel/
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
"Kansas House speaker bans reporters from chamber floor, doesn’t say why"
The Republican vision for a free press is respectful stenographers who only investigate what Republicans think are problems.
https://kansasreflector.com/2025/01/13/kansas-house-speaker-bans-reporters-from-chamber-floor-doesnt-say-why/
[#]KansasRepublicans
[#]FreedomOfThePress
[#]Democracy
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Does anyone know of a real Rock-n-Roll version of Peter and the Wolf?
We have a bunch of orchestral ones, variations (Allan Sherman, "Peter and the Commissar"), folk (Dave van Ronk and friends), jazz, even klezmer ("Pinchas and the Pig").
But has anyone really done a solid rockin' guitars and swingin' horns, drums, keyboard, bass rendition?
[#]PeterAndTheWolf
[#]RockAndRoll
[#]Prokofiev
[#]MusicHistory
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I was a computer science minor a third of a century ago, and it served me very well in the hand-coding html 90s, not to mention making me pretty adept at excel functions and equation (which made me a go-to grade sheet fixer in my department for a while), and pretty good with basic stuff. The key, which I learned from my father, is that you can't really break a computer, so you may as well try to get it to do what you need.
https://blob.love/@nora/113811102641100655
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
=> This profile with reblog | Go to jondresner@spore.social account This content has been proxied by September (3851b).Proxy Information
text/gemini
