Rose Knows

"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States"

"He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation"

When Trump pictured himself as king the other day, I thought to myself, "Self, isn't there a part of the Declaration of Independence that details exactly why the writers want to declare independence from the monarchy?"

Yup. There sure is. And BOY does it sound familiar.

The chaos is the point

I'm not huge into football and I'm only watching the Superbowl for work-related purposes (no, seriously) - but I'm getting the distinct impression that the Eagles understood and did the assignment while the Chiefs fed the assignment into ChatGPT and spent the rest of the week off playing Fortnite

Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism was meant to be a warning, not a how-to.*

We are in Part Three, Chapter Twelve.

*(I've written this so many times over the past 8 years my phone auto-predicts the whole sentence based on the first few letters. It's both funny and sad.)

Any other Gen X-ers getting a sense of "11pm on Dec 31, 1999"?

May the rest of the day be just as anticlimactic as January 1, 2000.

Watch Duty - Wildfire Maps & Alerts Watch Duty, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, alerts you of nearby wildfires and firefighting efforts in real-time.

Joining half of SoCal in recommending the other half download the Watch Duty app for #LAFire maps and updates. This thing is so up-to-date that when I hear a siren go west on Santa Monica Blvd, I already know where it's headed.

www.watchduty.org

Stay safe, LA folks. Evacuate if you have to. Stay the hell off the roads if you don't. Even if you don't live in an area that has sirens constantly screeching by, the winds are kiiiiinda nuts.

There's an evacuation center set up at the Westwood rec center on Sepulveda, across the 405 from the VA. I am telling myself that since I live pretty close, I'm safe from the #PacificPalisadesFire, because why else would they set up the shelter here?

It's almost working. I almost believe myself.

Obligatory last-night-of-Chanukah snap. Hey, my menorah works.

Let the record show that this Chanukah, I got my family's e-gift cards sent out before the last night. There's a medal for that, right?

Well, there should be.

It made so much sense at the time...

Observing Nittel Nacht in the way of my people

I like a good puzzle, so I spent longer than I should have trying to figure out how to get the desired result out of it. I finally just called and talked to a human. If the AI is supposed to free up humans from the rigors of making appointments, it's not working out so well.

I always say AI can be a useful tool if it's used effectively. I'm sure the place I was trying to set up an appointment thought, "It's just an appointment; how hard could it be?" Pretty hard, if the AI hasn't been trained on concepts like "tomorrow," "afternoon" and "tomorrow afternoon".

TFW you sure hope the customer service rep is AI because it hurts to think any human could be this literal yet incompetent.

I got mine right after the orange one's first election. I figured it was a good investment in calming my anxiety. I hope I never have to make a one-way trip over the border, but it makes me feel much better to know I can do it if I have to.

My Spotify Wrapped is podcasts.

Before anyone utters a negative word about President Biden pardoning Hunter, a friendly reminder that Donald Trump vowed to pardon the J6 insurrectionists and Ross Ulbricht on Day 1 - and granted executive clemency to 237 individuals while in office.

💅💅💅

a woman sits at a desk with a hp monitor Alt: Pam Beasley sits at a desk with a hp monitor, resolutely raising her hand

Who wants to tell her that she's almost certainly peed next to a trans woman, not known it and still lived to tell about it?

Oh, let me!

Theory: Trump's cabinet picks are being made by a high school junior who doesn't see the need to do the reading for an essay due tomorrow when ChatGPT is a thing

It's the heady days after a whole bunch of people join a platform and we get to decide what it will be: A space for lofty ideas? A news source? The mud pit from hell?

Personally, I vote for a "pick me up a couple items at Trader Joe's" exchange. I'm almost out of cold brew concentrate.

(I allow myself 20 minutes of denial a day.)

I thought the whole "put the governor of a low-population interior state with no relevant experience in charge of Homeland Security" was a good troll, but "make the AG a guy who's going to block investigations into his own federal crimes while he blanket pardons his boss" is really taking the cake

Hiya!

Oh, hey, I left this thing on

Until then, it's half-baked analysis and sea otters, with just the merest hint of generational trauma

Pitchers and catchers report in 123 days.

And now, back to obsessing over things I can't control!

This is how the Dodgers' year ends: Not with a bang, but with a whimper of forgetting how to hit in the postseason.

Again.

And they have a new fuzzy void of darkness!