CRANKY OLD FART
WITH THE NEWS #329
leftovers & links
Saturday, June 17, 2023
San Francisco's county jail is the first in the country to provide inmates with tablets and internet access.
Which is nice, but ponder the unspoken cruelty. It's 2023, and until now, no American jail has ever provided what you'd consider almost a basic human need in a civilized 21st century nation — internet access.
• When it comes out at all, it comes out lots later
In January, here in Seattle, a cop driving one of those big beefy mini-tank SUV cop cars was responding to a reported drug overdose, when he struck and killed a women in a crosswalk.
This was reported as a tragedy, one of those things, so sad, etc. The woman had come out of nowhere, we were told, foolishly entering the crosswalk when sirens were sounding, and the cop was all torn up about it.
As happens so very often, if the truth comes out at all, it's lots later: Now it's revealed (by a local news blog, not a newspaper or TV station) that ① the cop was driving at triple the speed limit in a crowded area, ② the woman would've had time to cross the street if he hadn't been speeding, ③ the drug overdose wasn't even an emergency, and ④ the cop knew it wasn't an emergency.
He was doing 74 mph in a 25 mph zone, for no reason at all, except that it's fun to drive fast and blare the siren.
• 8 activists in Massachusetts drop their drawers to protest climate change
• SUVs targeted in south Dublin by group protesting against climate change
Is this a trend? Sure hope so.
As for that third item, the headline "SUVs targeted" is misleading — they're deflating tires on parked SUVs, not vandalizing the cars themselves. The article never uses the word "slashed," so maybe they're merely letting the air out, causing no lasting damage at all.
With climate change, writing letters to your Congressperson is folly. Political and corporate leaders aren't doing squat about it. They lie and deny, or they pretend to give a damn, but it's only pretense.
Climate change is time-delayed mass murder — we are killing millions of people, now, only they won't be dead until 'then'. I think that's important, and it ought to be stopped, but working through the ordinary channels gives us nothing but endless international yakkity-yak conferences.
Me, I'm too lazy and comfortable to engage in guerrilla activities like these, but three cheers for the people brave enough to do it.
• Big business isn't doing so much of the fake gaywashing this year
• Here’s the note Reddit sent to moderators threatening them if they don’t reopen
It's a kooky situation. CEO Steve Huffman had a hand in writing the original Reddit software, and it made him rich and that's OK with me.
What made Reddit fun and made Huffman rich wasn't the software, though, it was the users posting interesting stuff, and the subReddit moderators putting in long unpaid hours keeping things on-topic.
Huffman doesn't write software any more. All he does is make the decisions that make the site worse. He's shitting on the users, threatening to 'fire' the volunteer moderators.
Kooky. Reddit is fueled by users and moderators having fun, and he's single-handedly sucking the fun out of it. Now the fun is watching him unintentionally sink the site.
• Hay fever may get worse due to climate change, says Met Office
• Mississippi deputies tortured Black men, shot one in mouth, lawsuit says
• Fired cop pleads guilty to kiddie porn, "is also on track to lose his law enforcement certification"
• The FBI groomed a 16-year-old with "brain development issues" to become a terrorist
• Southern Baptists expel US churches with female pastors
• Actual member of Congress tries, fails to show the COVID vaccine causes miscarriages
• House Republican panel releases budget that would "destroy Social Security as we know it"
• Republicans seek to strangle transit funding in Wisconsin
• Complaints from Polish conservatives ends 666 bus to Hel
Mystery links
There's no knowing where you're going
• Click
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♫♬ It don't mean a thing ♫
if it don't have that swing
• Ball of Confusion — The Temptations
• She Came in Through the Bathroom Window — Joe Cocker
• End of the Line — Traveling Wilburys
Eventually, everyone
leaves the building
6/17/2023
Cranky Old Fart is annoyed and complains and very occasionally offers a kindness, along with anything off the internet that's made me smile or snarl. All opinions fresh from my ass. Top illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Comments & conversations invited.
Tip 'o the hat to ye olde AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf's, CaptCreate's Log, Looking for My Perfect Sandwich, One Finger Medical, Two Finger Magical, Miss Miriam's Mirror, Nebulously Burnished, RanPrieur.com, Voenix Rising, and anywhere else I've stolen links, illustrations, or inspiration.
Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Wynn Bruce, Joey Jo Jo, John the Basket, Dave S, Name Withheld, and always extra special thanks to my lovely late Stephanie, who gave me 21 years and proved that the world isn't always shitty.
By coincidence, while I was looking at dead people, I spotted someone who is retired but very much alive at 95, Tom Lehrer. These are the lyrics to his song "Werner von Braun":
ReplyDeleteGather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance, is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown.
"Ha, Nazi Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun.
Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.
"Once the rockets are up,
Who cares where they come down?
That's not my department,"
Says Wernher von Braun.
Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town,
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.
This song was originally posted on protestsonglyrics.net
You too may be a big hero,
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero.
"In German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese," says Wernher von Braun.
Chuckles galore. And to think, before this conversation all I would've known about Werner is rockets and Nazi-American. Vedy ediccational, thanks sir.
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