Periwinkle Pachyderm

The one thing I've learned from the 21st century is that it very rarely comes down to incompetence OR malice. It is almost always both.

Hey so “underage girls” are…children. The word you’re looking for is children. They’re not like, women-in-waiting or women-lite or whatever. They’re children. I think some of you are very uncomfortable with what that means for you but it is still true.

I don't think my gym classes did a good job of teaching healthy motor patterns, and I'm paying for it now. It would be so amazing if schools had experts check in on kids and me like, hey bud, you are using all the wrong muscles to do that task, let's fix that before you jack up your body

A couple years ago I took a woodshop class. Learning how to saw with a hand saw from an expert was a whole revelation, even though I'd been using hand saws for years. So much of what the expert demonstrated was how to do things ergonomically to keep from falling into unhealthy motor patterns.

I learned about the cueing system a couple of years ago and was shocked. I'm so grateful my public education taught me with the phonics system. It is hard for me to wrap my brain around how a whole profession decided being able to read an isolated word was unnecessary.

Notice: “work sucks” when directed at men means that we need better working conditions and higher pay. “Work sucks” when directed at women means that they should drop out and have babies.

why do we allow private equity in our society? it's obviously bad for everyone in the world except the people doing it. it should be illegal like fraud

What happens to disabled people WILL ALWAYS happen to you.

Step 1: deliberately scare people with misinformation and lies about what a proposed policy or plan will do. Step2: wait for misinformed people to complain. Step 3: say that “clearly people are concerned,“ so we should “listen to the people“ and reject the plan. The Populist Playbook

Step 4: mainstream media “reports the controversy” rather than the fact it was manufactured, and the amplify the quotes of those who manufactured it.. Step5: other elected leaders who know the truth, still vote against the good plan or policy, because they’re too afraid of the “heat.“

Have you heard of “The Populist Playbook?”

A few years ago, I posted what I still consider one of my most important messages.

It was about “The Populist Playbook” that I’ve watched play out often over my 33+ years of city planning.

Since then, it’s only gotten worse.

Do the steps sound familiar?

seems to me that those democrats inclined not to fight perceive themselves as living through a somewhat ordinary cycle of presidential overreach and backlash and not something much more significant and dangerous

Insulin's High Cost Leads To Lethal Rationing Alec Raeshawn Smith was 23 when diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and 26 when he died. He couldn't afford $1,300 per month for his insulin and other diabetes supplies, so he tried to stretch the doses.

Before ACA, many Americans couldn’t afford insurance

Alex Smith was a diabetic who got kicked off his Mom’s insurance at 26

He made 35k a year which was “too much” for Medicaid, but not nearly enough to cover insurance premiums

He had to ration his insulin & died a month after losing insurance

agreeing to make a terrible deal while your main opponent is quite literally being boo'd on live tv by an entire stadium of people is the kind of political instinct you'd normally only find in a 3 week old dead goldfish

My family has been without half our income for 40 days. It has been.. very hard.

We are willing to feel that pain so people can have health care next year, or to undo these illegal recissions.

We are not willing to have been put through this for NOTHING.

Schumer (NY) 202 224-6542

Booker (NJ) 202 224-3224

King (ME) 202 224-5344

Hassan (NH) 202 224-3324

Durbin (IL) 202 224-2152

Ossoff (GA) 202 224-3521

Shaheen (NH) 202 224-2841

Gillibrand (NY) 202 224-4451

Masto (NV) 202 224-3542

Warner (VA) 202 224-2023

I do remember and it was a nightmare, even as a fully employed person with a career. If you had any gaps in coverage, say from being laid off for a couple of months, they'd use that gap to deny you coverage until you had a couple of years of continuous coverage. Just nonsense.

Concrete “battery” developed at MIT now packs 10 times the power New concrete and carbon black supercapacitors with optimized electrolytes have 10 times the energy storage of previous designs and can be incorporated into a wide range of architectural forms.

Wild. They are figuring out how to store electricity in ... concrete.

That is why care has transformative power beyond health. To be truly listened to – to be recognized not as a case but as a person – can change not just how one experiences illness, but how one experiences oneself and the world. It can foster the capacity to care for others across differences, to resist hatred and violence, to build the fragile social ties upon which democracy depends. By contrast, when medicine is reduced to data and transactions, it not only fails patients and demoralizes doctors. It also degrades democracy itself. A system that alienates people in their moments of deepest vulnerability – bankrupting them, gaslighting them, leaving them unheard – breeds despair and rage. It creates the conditions in which authoritarians gain traction.

This connection isn’t articulated often enough.

🚨infant formula recall

A post on Mastodon by small cypress (@small_cypress@indieweb.social): As an art teacher I was worried AI would come up as an issue of "why should I learn how to draw when I can use AI instead." But the real issue is that my middle schoolers CONSTANTLY believe all art I show them is AI. Digital art. Photography. Oil paintings from the Western canon. "A human couldn't do that" Being convinced that humans can't make great art is kind of terrifying

I spotted this on Mastodon and I find it horrible, not least for the speed with which this has happened.

Series: A Capsule Kitchen A Capsule Kitchen: a series featuring simple, vegan, inexpensive, minimal recipes that are in rotation in my home. I post new recipes every ...

As someone who fully understands the reality of financial precariousness, I began sharing how to stretch grocery dollars while still maintaining a vegan diet with "A Capsule Kitchen." With SNAP in limbo & food prices rising daily, knowing how to make health, simple, inexpensive meals is priceless. 🫶

OpenAI faces 7 lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide, delusions OpenAI is facing seven lawsuits claiming ChatGPT drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.

Six people died from tampered Tylenol and the company pulled 30 million bottles off the market. ChatGPT is accused of urging seven people towards suicide, and OpenAI just assures us they’re still working out the kinks. Billions in investment, zero accountability.

Important to remember that Air Traffic Controllers were part of Musk's absolutely devastating attack on government workers. Musk did not just kill 100,000's around the world, he also kicked off the year from hell for government workers that will ensure issues for US for at least a generation.

Black American soldiers literally dug these WWII graves. Traumatic. To acknowledge that fact at a cemetery they helped construct is something the Heritage Foundation cannot accept. As Veterans Day approaches, never forget that this country both compels and disrespects Black military service. Always.

Remember: There is nothing natural or inevitable about extreme inequality; it’s the result of an economic system that values wealth and power over human dignity and justice.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…

This is fucking brilliant, and you should read it: lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

‘Pluribus’ Includes “Made By Humans” Disclaimer In Credits Amid AI Discourse As artificial intelligence becomes less discernible and more prevalent, Vince Gilligan is setting an example about transparency with 'Pluribus'.

Vince Gilligan: “I have not used ChatGPT, because as of yet, no one has held a shotgun to my head and made me do it.”

Fair.

You can’t afford a coal mine.

You can’t afford a gas turbine.

You can’t afford an oil rig.

Only fossil fuel states and billionaires can.

But you can afford a solar power station on your roof.

Now, ask yourself why you encounter so much anti-renewable energy propaganda.

Cuomo Backers Burned $65 Per Vote, Including $13.3 Million From Bloomberg A blizzard of outside spending on ads, including a spot that linked Zohran Mamdani to 9/11, failed to move voters and may have even backfired.

"In the weeks before Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral dream went up in smoke on election night, a handful of independent spending groups backed by New York City’s oligarchy spent more than $55 million supporting the ex-governor or attacking his ultimately victorious rival, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani."

I heard that in the past, a few kids were killed while using a product called lawn darts. So then we stopped selling lawn darts. Can we have that kind of society again?

We must remember, the single only thing we as a society can afford is to give giant tax breaks and govt contracts to billionaires so they can accumulate more money than they could ever use. Any other use of money is VERY dangerous!