Also for some reason, line dancing.

Boredom, I imagine.

It’s not a bad strategy for the protest organizers, though. If you see someone sullenly staring down the cops (who tend to be itching for reasons to pick fights), grabbing ‘em up for a nerves break is a good way to defray the situation — and demoralize the cops who are stuck at work while others have fun around them.

Yeah, but like, are we sure it wasn’t just a Tesla?

I feel that in my area the driving culture has become so toxic that there’s a better than average chance that indicating a lane change (which I always do) will lead to the vehicle in the lane you’re attempting to change into accelerating to prevent you from ‘getting in front of them.’
It’s so frustrating (and dangerous!). It seems that a lot of folks feel entitled to the road, or the patch of road in front of their car fro as long as the eye can see, and are willing to behave irrationally regarding it.

I feel that telegraphing that your vehicle is slowing down (for any purpose) will lead to overconfidence or even willful misunderstanding by other drivers. A careful slow-down will turn to panic as they try to take advantage of the situation. I also think that drivers will focus on the vehicles too much, and will not focus on things like pedestrians or perhaps why your car is slowing down, and wind up contributing to the problem.

You are a light in the darkness.

Right! I can’t wait to hear about all the new historical events!

I wonder if anyone witnessed the burning of the Library of Alexandria and felt a similar sense of despair for the future of knowledge.

Ope, now I regret deleting my edited explanation! That is an excellent response to my accidental comment.

My immediate thought was “That’s not all they’re going to be hitting…”

deleted by creator

Or mastodon.

I misread the headline as “dead ghost” initially.

Your idea + my misreading = what poltergeists refer to as a horror movie.

Edit: After reading the article, it sounds like a horror movie already. I hope all parties involved get the help they need.

Yeah - I mean. I’m not an economic analyst by any means, but a lot of people keep expecting a housing market “correction” in the U.S., but one keeps not materializing.

Usually consumer sentiment is self-fulfilling, but the market and the government seem intent on white knuckling their way through this, through whatever shenanigans they have to pull. Ultimately, I sort of think a hyperinflation scenario is becoming more likely.

That’s unlikely to happen, and in my layperson’s understanding, that’s probably as bad as a collapse in housing prices.

The U.S. housing market is currently supply constrained, according to this Brookings podcast.

Between the above supply constraints, corporations/venture capital funds snapping up houses, yo-yoing tariffs either driving up costs or creating uncertainty for builders, and climate change rendering millions of homes uninsurable/unfixable in case of disaster, the demand will only increase.

At the same time, a weakening dollar and soaring rates will make houses more expensive to buy and finance.

There will be a real-estate reckoning. I just don’t see it happening irrespective of other factors. I’m more worried about people who don’t have a house or don’t have some way to protect themselves from the economic hell that has yet to unfold.

I don’t disagree that there is a strategy of downplaying not just Biden’s, but every politician’s health conditions.

I used to have this absolutely incredible writing professor, who, at 85, told us on the first day of class that he was dying, and had been for 4 years. He even had a blog about his reflections on mortality that he invited us to read. He had prostate cancer. I don’t remember the details, but they couldn’t operate to remove it or do chemo, but it was the kind that is hormone sensitive. They gave him a drug that destroyed his body’s ability to produce testosterone, so the cancer just stopped growing. He died at 90 - 9 years after his diagnosis. 10% extra life for him.

No two people and prognosis’ are alike but the possibility exists they might be telling the truth about managing it.

Seeing headlines before reading the articles, I thought “could they be growing a conscience?”

Silly, silly me.

For high steaks work, trust A1.

I was just thinking about Adafruit, and how pissed they must be.

This is a weird connection to make, but since this started happening, my wife and I have been unintentionally saving money.

I don’t think we’re doing it ‘on purpose’, but instead of the usual stream of random frivolity, we’re just sort of trimming back, and as a result, find ourselves with extra money to transfer to savings when we look at our accounts.
I think we’re both just trying to be ready, should we need extra resources for whatever reason.

I know of an organization attached to a prestigious university that solely exists because at the end of some billionaire’s life, he decided he wanted to chuck some cash into a foundation to try to burnish his image.

But he was so morally corrupt that his version of helping others was to mandate that the foundation focus on “helping” people in developing countries find business opportunities.
Read: they assess how people and environments can be exploited for capitalism while focusing on telling stories about how that exploitation improved the quality of life for people there.
Most of the professors who work with the foundation are very wealthy from their non-academic pursuits.

I mean, everyone is already fucked, and that’s what keeps everyone else in check.

Russia has made great efforts to hack municipal systems all over the world, and may actually have some control over Microsoft systems, owing to that credential hack last year that Microsoft still hasn’t confirmed is contained. (Recent Russian hacking campaigns are using malicious signed MSI files, so my bet is no…)

China has all that communication equipment everywhere, with rumors swirling that it’s intentionally compromised. There’s also Tuya, a massive IOT company that produces its own products and also white label products. And there’s all the EV power inverters that can be hacked and used as a botnet to destroy electrical grids. Not that they need to, because apparently they can shut down the U.S. power grid remotely. And who knows what they’ve managed to do with the U.S.’s backdoor access into telecom systems.

The U.S. has its own devices, hacking, and infiltration efforts, although as a U.S. citizen, my awareness of them is decreased due to U.S. media.

But my core point is that there’s basically a digital Cold War happening. And the U.S. is all but surrendering, making successful surveillance, hacking, and sabotage campaigns more likely.
If a situation goes hot at the same time that large parts of U.S. see poisonings or health issues en masse due to tampering with water supply chemical or filtration systems or even the possible destruction of drinking water systems, the explosion of natural gas lines as C&C systems over pressurize domestic lines, followed by a prolonged grid-wide electrical outage, the U.S. will have basically no ability to do anything but focus on domestic issues.

I read deeper into the article than I care to admit because I wanted to find the date of original introduction.

The Equality Act was introduced in 1974, only 10 years after the civil rights act, which it sought to amend.

In the 8 legislative sessions where democrats have held a trifecta since the act’s introduction, they have not attempted to pass it (instead, favoring stripped down versions that often have many LGBT+ protections removed if a bill has been introduced at all). Every time it has lost the vote or died in committee. And now here we are, less than a week after Trump has moved to nuke the way that the CRA is enforced. So… if both succeed we are actually further from the goal.

Great. Good politics. Not ineffective virtue signaling while being passenger princesses on this ride to fascism at all.