Nate Thatcher

An 82-year-old permanent resident who survived torture under Pinochet was arrested at a Philadelphia immigration office where he'd gone to get his green card replaced, and deported to Guatemala—which was not his country of birth.

Milestones around necks sounds acceptable...

You've done your country a great service. More people need to fear that such behavior may get them on the wrong side of a powerful fey.

TRUTH BOMB 💣 this guy is a Pedophile. I also made him President

I have to work about 60/40 in Dorico/Sibelius at this point because of various collaborations and still (in spite of quite promising updates to Sib) I feel like I'm swimming with a drag net behind me whenever I'm using Sibelius. But I feel your pain, too. You're right, though. He's not worth it.

When I learned that the character's name was spelled that way I was a tad let down!

My parents live in Sioux Falls! Next time I'm there this endorsement will not go unheeded.

In between the stories of horrific human rights abuses and trade war insanity I remember that they have also destroyed all our research and data infrastructure and effectively ended any environmental, health, or labor regulation.

I was thinking about the same thing. I also love that the intro to the film tells us about Chocktaw and Irish analogs to West African griots, but we're left to fill in the blanks about the antipathy oppressed peoples with analogous music traditions.

I think I might be a Dorico accelerationist who experienced some shameful schadenfreude at recent Finale developments.

Federal spending is *up* under Trump according to the Wall Street Journal. Chaos is not actually the same as cost savings.

Actual budgeting is a kind of actual policy-making and takes real work spread over real time. Running around breaking stuff isn't that.

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Is anyone even bothering to contend that this isn't a genocide anymore?

Symphony Orchestra Simply Cannot Wait For Collaboration With John Mellencamp PHILADELPHIA—Saying the live performance will be a dream come true following decades of music study, members of the Philadelphia Orchestra announced Wednesday that they simply cannot wait for their up...

theonion.com/symphony-orc...

Sic semper...

I've seen this quote attributed to Wendell Berry by trustworthy sources:
"We don’t have a right to ask whether we’re going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to ask is what’s the right thing to do? What does this earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it?”

I'm actually particularly entertained by how well ChiCago and YaYNkees work.

THEM: You just want to have an echo chamber!

ALVIN LUCIER: I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves

"Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape? The money lenders, the know-nothings, the authoritarians have us all in prison; if we value the freedom of the mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can."

Thanks to @sketchesbyboze.bsky.social for reminding me of this Ursula K. le Guin quote.

OpenAI Pleads That It Can’t Make Money Without Using Copyrighted Materials for Free OpenAI is begging Parliament to allow it to use copyrighted works because it's "impossible" for the company to make money without them.

"Sorry, we can't make this technology that sucks and nobody wants and that uses enough power to blow up the moon unless we *also* steal people's shit to throw into our content woodchipper in order to produce mediocre digital particleboard out of the cumulative artbarf."

futurism.com/the-byte/ope...

Screenshot from "Letter from our correspondent" in "Papua New Guinea Courier"

The Papua New Guinea Courier is in rare form.

Around 35% of SpaceX’s revenue comes directly from the federal govt.

Less than 1% of NPR’s budget comes from the federal govt.

In the early COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese government censored scientific research for 6 days; this is frequently called out by US elected officials. Now, US scientists have been prohibited from speaking with the public for 17 days and counting.

@realtomemanuel.bsky.social this is inspired by your recent favorite things post. I liked your prelude to it.

I need to just earnestly revel in the good of something. Can we have a little thread of what we feel are the best line readings in the LoTR Jackson trilogy? I'll start. Boromir: "Give them a moment, for pity's sake!" Such a small moment but perfectly delivered.
@bythebywater.bsky.social

I've built a machine that can be Confidently Wrong. It can also make pictures that all look a bit the same, as well as make a video of you kissing any celebrity or person you know. In payment, I'd like to boil the world's oceans dry, & steal all literature. For some reason, my head is not on a spike

The job of media commentators is to respond thoughtfully to how people feel, not to tell them how to feel. Which is why the editorials deploring the reaction to the healthcare CEO slaying are such failures of curiosity and understanding, such triumphs of obliviousness and elite panic.

The “Heartbreaking: the worst person you know just made a great point” meme but it says “got appointed to a cabinet position”

reading the news

At this point it’s been said in a hundred different ways, so I think people are being intentional about not getting it.

The state doesn’t have the right or the legitimacy to kill anyone, innocent or guilty, but the state-sanctioned slaughter of the innocent, here and across borders, should evacuate any remaining illusions.