A serious post for a change. My wife and I will soon start making our very modest contributions to candidates we want to keep in office and also ones we hope can flip seats from red-orange to blue. Not talking much money: $10 here, $25 there. But if a million people contribute $10 to a candidate for the House, that's not pocket change. Who are your reps? Who should we look at? I usually look at Emily's list first but there are a lot of people we'll undoubtedly miss. Suggestions? Thanks!
@2a70c54d
What gives me the shivers is that it takes 8 minutes for light to reach us from the sun. So if the sun goes out, we won't know it for 8 minutes.
It would be exciting for a few minutes if it happened in the daytime. All of a sudden it would be like the middle of the night and--depending on local light pollution--the starry sky would appear.
Then the big chill would start, and the return of snowball earth. How long would it take for everything to freeze, I wonder? Climate change!
Either more trolls are visiting us or my posts containing "climate change" and "vaccines" are triggering reactions. I muted one person yesterday and blocked another this morning. So hardly a tidal wave, but since I joined Mastodon last November, I've only blocked a few Chinese companies advertising junk, and one actual person shooting word salad at me. So two in two days is a big jump. Very happy I can vanish them with a click or two. They didn't even say goodbye!
/satire
I'm glad climate change is just a hoax. Otherwise I'd be worried about anomolies like
Not enough water in the MIssissippi.
Not enough water in the Rhine.
Salt water coming for New Orleans.
Missing glaciers everywhere.
Canada burning.
Greece drowning and burning.
States and regions sinking - where did the groundwater go?
Cars floating around NY City after a little rain storm.
Phoenix competing with Death Valley for temperature records.
And so on. Just a hoax, whew!
@30ce86c6
Take it from me, a kid before there was a measles vaccine. I spent a miserable week in bed with the window shades down. Not fun and I was lucky not to get really sick--or die. I remember the relief when a vaccine against polio was finally developed. I remember the relief when we got rid of smallpox--what an achievement!
Read some history, people, and protect your kids. And be glad you can.
Saw my older daughter briefly an hour ago. She told me she was exposed to Covid yesterday. She saw a friend who flew home and called her later to say he'd tested positive. And his wife has long Covid which she got from his brother at some point. Yep, it's still with us, still evolving, still thriving cause too many of us are content to pretend Covid is in the past. Like the MIddle Ages or the 100 Years War.
Dumb. Wear a mask, get vaccinated.
@62a04c04
My first trip to Europe was in the summer of 1967. I spent some time in a small town in Germany and realized after a few days that there almost no men in their late 40s or 50s living there. Eventually I figured out they had probably died during WWII. Putin is doing his best to kill off or drive away a big chunk of Russia's male population. And of course Ukraine is losing soldiers too defending their country. #PutinWarCriminal
@62a04c04
Any time the crap gets you down, turn to your in-house counselor dog. A few minutes of unconditional love from a furry friend and you'll be grounded and centered. Why worry about word salad when you've get slobbery kisses waiting for you? 😂
And Ollie's daily crash around 8pm is my reminder not to stay up too late. (I'm gonna take his advice right now.) ❤️ 🐕
#dogsofmastodon
@3967703f
I live in Maine where white folks are common as fleas so mostly we give Covid to other white people. But racism is incredibly stupid, so to be expected from homo stupidus. (Nobody cares about my rants but there is only one human species/race. Differences in skin color, eye shape, etc. give us an excuse to act abominably, but we are genetically all the same with trivial differences.)
So, like I said, we're all homo stupidus and if we don't smarten up soon, we'll be extinctus.
A neighbor told me today that her mom and brother-in-law both tested positive for Covid today. They were recently in church with a person in the row in front of them coughing. Hardly anyone wearing masks, of course. The neighbor is scheduled for the updated Covid vaccine next week. For now she waits with fingers crossed.
#covid
My wife, daughter, and two granddaughters just turned on Dancing with the Stars or whatever it's called.
Ollie is growling to go outside so he can pee on the little Trump Tower I put out for him. (Just kidding--but not a bad idea. I can draw one on a scrap of cardboard.)
Trump is somewhere hurling ketchup while his flunkies pretend everything is okay and wait for him to have a stroke.
1000s of bees swarmed in our backyard today, then vanished.
Is the world not strange and mysterious?
As a long-time reader of British mysteries, in which dukes and counts and other big shots, having had their horrible crimes discovered, go into their office/libraries, lock the doors, and take the 'honorable' way out (they always have pistols in their desks they kept after serving in India)--well, hearing that Trump did buy a Glock and then that he didn't buy one, I confess to disappointment. (If you think my sentence was long, try Faulkner!) Anyway, it was just a thought, and not a nice one. 😇
I think it's stupid and wrong to give Trump air time to spew lies, but if media outfits decide it's good for ratings or whatever, I propose a change in format.
Instead of fact-checks after the lies have aired, turn it into a contest where viewers--for cash prizes, c'mon!--submit lists predicting the lies ahead of time. I'll leave the details to smarter people but I imagine bells ringing or lights flashing during the 'interview' every time there is a winner. Maybe like bingo? Make it fun!
@3967703f
Blind spots?
Tunnel vision?
Brainwashed?
Too busy smirking to notice when one is being played for a sucker?
Just plain dumb?
Or the best answer when in doubt: all of the above?
Footnote: I am a bona fide old white person having been called "toubab" (white man) by little children when I lived in Senegal. They knew one when they saw one.❤️
@91f7a9d2
Visit the brand new Museum of Beadwork in Portland.
https://www.museumofbeadwork.org/
Disclaimer: Conceived of and despite Covid delays, brought into existence by my daughter, Heather. The beadwork in the museum is astonishing.
@9703c978
Sooner or later, normal working people will either live in tents or leave Florida. I'd suggest they burrow underground but with the water table a foot below the surface (or a foot above at times), that's not an option. The state is steadily becoming less and less attractive, and all it would take is a couple of monster hurricane direct hits, and survivors would be bugling taps and heading north.
@3967703f
When I was a teenager, gas cost around $0.16 per gallon and sirloin was about the same per pound. The current minimum wage would have been good pay back then.
I was a teenager in the 1960s--the minimum wage is stuck in a time warp.
My in-state tuition at UCLA was $82.50 per quarter when I started in 1966.
(No credit to me: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar--then Lew Alcindor and now well-known for lots more than hoops--was at UCLA the same 4 years.)
The min wage is a NATIONAL SHAME.
@3967703f
I don't have any way to judge even on a local level, but my gut tells me it's herd behavior. If only 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 people wear masks at the supermarket, people unconsciously start thinking "Oh, I guess it's safe not to mask any more." And then that behavior becomes the general standard, at least until people start dying in droves again. This is greatly aggravated by medical personnel dropping masks too. But I think we're more like lemmings than we imagine. Homo stupidus.
@2a70c54d
Couldn't agree more. Not holding my breath. If Jimmy Carter got as much respect as Trump gets attention, it'd be a better world. Perhaps the only question at 'presidential' debates should be this: Please tell us what you have already done in your life to make the world a safer, healthier, better place for others. How would you improve life for everyone, especially those who are in any way disadvantaged, if you were President?
The GOP response, if honest, would be a big silence.
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