CRANKY OLD FART'S
BROWSER HISTORY
#370 [archive]
• The Republican Party is waging a "coordinated national effort to undermine American elections," says leading official
[Original link]
For at least years, it’s been obvious that Republicans are opposed to fair and open elections, people voting, and democracy in general, but this is the first mainstream coverage I’ve seen that states that plainly.
• Celebrating fifty years of Section 504, the pre-ADA law that said the disabled have rights
[Original link]
Excerpt: The Rehabilitation Act was signed into law by President Richard Nixon, after he vetoed it twice. But four years later, following President Jimmy Carter’s Inauguration, the federal government still had not issued regulations spelling out the details of Section 504. Thus, the law could not be enforced.
This delay infuriated disability rights activists so much that on April 5, 1977, protests were held around the country demanding that the regulations be released.
In San Francisco, protesters showed up at the regional office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and they vowed not to leave until the demand was met. Various protesters ended up continuously occupying that office until satisfactory regulations were issued twenty-six days later. …
• There's petroleum hidden in your jeans
[Original link]
Excerpt: … “Today's denim has very little in common with what people were making a couple of hundred years ago,” said Stefano Aldighieri, a California-based denim consultant who has worked with Levi’s and other denim brands. That rough-and-tumble, stiff cotton denim favored by railroad workers is long gone.
Today, a typical pair of jeans contains polyester thread, poly-cotton interior pockets, polyester zipper tape, plastic interfacing inside the waistband, polyester tags and labels, and, depending on the design, polyester and elastane added for stretch. Almost all of these synthetics are derived from petroleum.
“Even when things are marked cotton, and we think we're shopping for cotton products, we are still participating in a petrochemical economy,” said Paul Dillinger, Levi’s vice president of Global Product Innovation. He said that in a small pair of women’s jeans marked as 100% cotton, up to 10% comprises other materials. That’s because the Federal Trade Commission only requires manufacturers to list materials that comprise 5% or more of the product’s weight.
[Original link]
• How American English grew apart from English English
[Original link]
• Quilts in the window, as guideposts to freedom for slaves
[Original link]
• Elizabeth Warren helpfully identifies Medicare trustee nominee's glaring conflict of interest for him
[Original link]
• Rats: Not guilty after all, of spreading the Plague?
[Original link]
• The capitalists will let you drown
[Original link]
Excerpt: … But what is so infuriating isn't just climate change, and it’s not even the refusal to systemically address the climate crisis — which is now very much a present, not future, emergency. It's that instead of expending resources to strengthen our infrastructure, build sustainability, and better our lives we've been spending endlessly on violence.
The federal government spends a trillion dollars on war every year. Cities spend a third of their budgets on policing. And working class people are left to face the consequences.
We are the ones left to face the floods and the fires, while billionaires escape to compounds and jet to second homes, then make charity appeals where they ask us to fundraise for the victims of these disasters. …
• A man who went 50 years without a conversation
• The Police Problem
This is my ongoing collection of police brutality, beatings, and general corruption — the 'greatest hits' of America's brutes with badges.
• Amusing, Interesting, Outrageous, or Profound
And this is my Lemmy page, for anything that's amusing, interesting, outrageous, or profound (in my opinion).
📸 IMAGES 📸
• Delivering a package on 9/11/2001
♫♬ MUSIC ♫
• Comfortably Numb — Luther Wright and the Wrongs
• Subterranean Homesick Blues — Salt Creek
❔ MYSTERY LINKS ❔
.jpg)
• Click
• Click
• Click
• Click
👁 VIDEO 👁
• Trippy, mon... Come into the cigarette box with me...
☠ OBITUARIES ☠
• Pat Arrowsmith
[Original link]
• Matteo Messina Denaro
[Original link]
• Dianne Feinstein
[Original link]
• Michael Gambon
[Original link]
• Tail Dragger Jones
[Original link]
• Brooks Robinson
[Original link]
• Endel Tulving
[Original link]
9/30/2023
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 the AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf's, Kottke,org, Looking for My Perfect Sandwich, MetaFilter, Miss Miriam's Mirror, RanPrieur.com, @soberscientistlife, Voenix Rising, and anywhere else I've stolen links, illustrations, or inspiration.
Special thanks to Linden Arden, Becky Jo, Wynn Bruce, Joey Jo Jo emeritus, 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.
Doug, you lived in San Francisco and I didn't, but as nearly as I can tell, Sen. Feinstein mostly committed the sin of growing old. She stepped forward at a horrible time for the city, as a plain middle of the road Democrat, respected that the city's needed to value its gay and lesbian population, moved the city ahead when it was frozen in grief, and was as inclusive as any mayor of that city has been. She spent much of her Senate career fighting against the sale of automatic weapons in this country, and was a fairly reliable progressive vote throughout her long Senate career. She wasn't perfect, and she was wrong about a few things, but generally she was a better Senator than 80% of those who have occupied that body and she did it when a woman in that room was an anomaly.
ReplyDeleteWhen we grow old, we sometimes grow weak, but weakness didn't characterize 95% of her political career.
johnthebasket
Was she "a fairly reliable progressive vote" in the Senate? I don't follow the intricacies of Congress, but jeez I never saw anything 'progressive' from her.
ReplyDeleteIf she was fighting against the sale of automatic weapons, she must've been about as effective as Al Gore fighting against climate change.
Never t'was I a fan of DiFi, sorry. Maybe she rocked it as Mayor; it was before I was there.
She had more millions than I have hundreds, and as Senator, by SF standards she was a moderate Republican. While living there and since, I never thought of her as anything but an impediment to any issue I cared about.
Of course, I don't much like anyone in Congress who's to the right of AOC.
I follow the anti-gun lobby a little, and she was a bit of a hero there. One reason her subcommittee meetings rarely made news is that she was one of the few Democrats willing to take on the gun lobby full-on. I'd say she was the strongest anti-automatic weapon voice in the Senate. If you measure senators by the bills they get passed, I suppose she wasn't very effective. But she gets points from me for never giving up after two of her SF colleagues were gunned down. Sometimes we just have to take the long view. If we ever sober up and restrict the sale of ghost guns and automatic weapons, her name should be on the final bill. It won't be, but it should. Ronald Reagan was a two-term Governor of California, and by those standards, she was a progressive. She was Mayor of San Francisco, but as Senator was elected by the entire state. I'm not confusing her with Desmond Tutu. I'm saying that, had she died ten years earlier the headlines would have been different. Politics is rarely black and white.
ReplyDeleteJohn
Rarely black and white? Tell that to Desmond who looked good in a tutu.
DeleteRare is the politician who measures up to my lofty recliner standards of left-tilted brilliance.
But my "long view" is, Dan White did damage that's continued ever since, by putting an undistinguished member of the Board of Supes in the Mayor's chair and setting her up for the eternal Senate seat.
I'm not particularly hating on her, maybe. There aren't a dozen people in the House and Senate who shouldn't be replaced. I hate almost all of 'em.
Jeez, Google really didn't want me to say any of this...
When you say it in yellow, you really mean it, right?
ReplyDeleteYessir or yesmaam. Means I really mean it, but argument is invited so's I can smote you with mighty words.
DeleteChill bro, no argument so no smote please. It is neck and neck I think whether we get full-on collapse of American democracy or daily climate change hell first.
DeleteIf I was any chiller I'd be on a slab at the morgue.
Delete"Daily climate change hell" will lead to societal collapse, if there's still a society. The end of democracy and civilization will come incrementally, though, so which apocalypse comes first seems largely moot.
This is an example of why early Tom Waits is better than late Tom Waits.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2_snSkpULQ
John
Oh, that's glorious. I'd forgotten that song entirely. Goes onto the playlist, of course & grazi.
DeleteSometimes I think Late Tom Waits is doing a parody of his younger self, much like Bob Dylan and Chuck Norris.
You have a knowledgeable correspondent who seems to prefer the later stuff, and he has made cogent arguments to support that position. I hope he writes in with a later Waits song that supports his thesis.
DeleteJohn
Yes, it's four in the morning, crapped out, yawning, longing my life away. Actually it's 4:20. Do I get to light up a dubie?
Four in the morning, I know it well. I'd always rather be asleep, but at least the day hasn't been wasted yet. Check back around noon...
Delete