Good: my city is running a survey to get citizen input. Bad: they’re capturing IP addresses for geolocation without telling people.
TIL that Thunderbird has incoming message filters for RSS. Now there are 98% fewer Amazon Prime Day posts in the feeds I follow. This is a feature that actually makes me happy.
Didn’t finish: Cronies, by Ken Babbs 📚: Well, I really wanted to like this one, but I realized after 100 pages that it was just turning into a dreadful slog. It’s a “burlesque” tale of the Merry Pranksters and associated bits of the sixties, but the style and storytelling overwhelm any history.
“Devastated”
Olympus E-M10 IV with 14-42mm kit lens @ 14mm, f/8, 1/80s, ISO 320. High Divide Trail through the 2022 Ceder Creek fire scar.
US lawmakers write to Canada to complain that its wildfire smoke is spoiling summer
Maybe if the Republican Party hadn’t been taken over by anti-science climate change denialists we would be seriously interested in being part of the solution. As it is…take a deep breath, assholes, this is your fault.
Coffee prices climb after Donald Trump threatens 50% tariffs on Brazil
I started drinking coffee when I was 10 years old. Looks like I may have to stop before I’m 66. Well, it was good while it lasted.
DHS Tells Police That Common Protest Activities Are ‘Violent Tactics’
When skateboards are outlawed, only outlaws will have skateboards.
Trump nominates ‘alpha male’ MAGA firebrand to serve as ambassador to Malaysia
Dear Malaysia,
We’re sorry.
Signed, Thinking Americans
“The Road Ahead”
Olympus E-M10 IV with 14-42mm kit lens @ 14mm, f/8, 1/320s, ISO 200. FR 5883 near the Fuji Mountain Trail.
Far-right extremist group threatens to take weather radars offline
The rise of the mind-numbingly stupid continues. If anyone gets killed because of this nonsense it lays at Marjorie Taylor Greene’s doorstep.
Elon Musk Says Grok Is Coming to Tesla EVs
Maybe I just need to add a whole category for “what can possibly go wrong?”
“Embrace the Rock”
Olympus E-M10 IV with 14-42mm kit lens @ 14mm, f/8, 1/80s, ISO 250. Shot along the Fuji Mountain Trail.
And we’re not even six months in.
I am so sick of Verizon deciding that it can just install bloatware on my phone whenever it wants.
Trump tariffs goods from Brazil at 50%, citing ‘witch hunt’ trial against country’s former president
It gets ever more embarrassing to live in a country run by this idiotic man-baby.
Well, I guess the price spike will be good for the copper thieves, who are pretty thick around here. Bad for those of us who depend on things like street lights though.
Grok Is Spewing Antisemitic Garbage on X
Just in case you were under any illusion that Elon’s purported “America Party” was going to be a good thing.
Rollins: Medicaid recipients, automation can replace deported farmworkers
So the Secretary of Agriculture thinks Medicaid recipients will flock to the farms to do jobs that historically have been nearly impossible to hire US citizens for? Good luck with that.
El Salvador: Detained migrants are responsibility of US
So it appears the Trump administration was flat-out lying when they claimed they had no power to return people from the El Salvadorian concentration camp they sent them to. If the House wasn’t run by toadies and bootlickers there would be impeachment hearings today.
Generative Ghosts: Anticipating Benefits and Risks of AI Afterlives
I wonder whether we’re at the point where a will or end-of-life directive should contain instructions about whether one wishes to persist as a digital double. I wonder whether such wishes would be legally binding on heirs.