CRANKY OLD FART’S BROWSER HISTORY #389  [archive] DEC. 2, 2023

UAE oil CEO Sultan Al Jaber uses his role as UN climate summit president to push fossil fuel deals
    All these COP conferences are mighty monuments to the world’s increasingly hot air. Important agreements will be reached to battle the climate catastrophe, but once sealed with signatures and champagne, the agreements will be ignored, as always.
    COP, you know, stands for Conference of the Parties, and the parties are legendary.
    Nobody attending gives more than a perfunctory half-hoot about anything but attending, getting a nice photo op from their best angle, enjoying the fine meals and good sex and seeing all their old buddies from the previous 27 Conferences of the Parties.
    When they’ve finished accomplishing nothing, they’ll hug and kiss and squeeze each others’ butt-cheeks and say, “See you at COP29!”
    As the world burns …

LGBTQ+ teens won a $10,000 grant for a safe space at their school. The School Board sent the money back.
    Because, you see, certain kids should have no safe space anywhere. 

Fine print bombshell – share information which “undermines trust in government”, face jail
    I missed most of Yes, Minister, but this seems a fine mix of Monty Python’s Flying Circus with The Thick of It. 

Appeals court tells Texas to remove anti-migrant death buoys, in setback at border for Abbott
  
 Until it’s overturned on appeal, which it will be, the Republicans
running Texas are no longer allowed to float death buoys to slice up
migrants in the Rio Grande — assuming, which seems unlikely, that
Republicans still have to obey court orders. 

Metro deploys outreach teams at Burien station to aid passengers in need
    News from Seattle, my home town: It says here, “Burien Transit Center is staffed seven days a week, morning and night,” with social workers reaching out to help the homeless. There’s no housing to offer, of course, because that would cost serious money, but these helper-teams have a supply van, and hand out help-packets that contain cotton gloves, hand warmers, granola bars, and drinks.
    That’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.
    And yet, almost every time I go anywhere on the bus, I wait for a transfer at the Burien Transit Center. When I was employed, I was there daily. Now I’m there a few days every week, “morning and night.” I’ve spent at least hundreds of hours at Burien Transit Center, seen countless lost souls being generally ignored or lightly hassled by transit security guards.
    But never have I ever seen even a hint of the help described in this article.
    The Times coverage is not a flat-out lie; only fools believe that’s how media works. I’m sure the reporter is accurately reporting what was told to him, by people who probably believe what they said, but somewhere along the line someone’s being seriously snookered.
    This program does not exist, at least not at anywhere near the scale described. 

Wikipedia editor who first noted Henry Kissinger’s death has become an ‘instant legend’
    Excerpt: Wikipedia users are celebrating the first user to edit Henry Kissinger’s Wikipedia page after the widely-hated American statesman and war criminal was announced dead on Wednesday at the age of 100.
    “I’m now forever the girl who changed ‘is’ to ‘was’ on Henry Kissinger’s Wikipedia article,” reads the bio of the Wikipedia user Asticky, who updated her bio after editing Kissinger’s page on 8:46 PM EST on Wednesday. Since then, dozens of users have responded with messages of support and congratulations to Asticky on being the first to edit the page. … 

Rep Adam Smith (D-Washington) says his home was vandalized by Gaza ceasefire supporters
    This is an outrage, certainly, but on the scale of Gaza atrocities, it’s a pimple on Congressman Smith’s expanding bald spot.Pro-Palestine protester self-immolates outside Atlanta’s Israeli consulate 

Top Republican liar expelled from Congress
  
 This isn’t good news. First, Santos was funny, so I’ll miss the
laughs, but more importantly, this particular shit-head was elected, and
being elected ought to mean he’s in Congress. The power of the House to expel
members at will or whim is one of many Constitutional mistakes.
    That said, did you notice that a majority of Republicans, 112 of 222, voted not to expel their legendary liar who’s never told the truth?

Of Americans born in 1940, 92 percent went on to earn more than their parents; among those born in 1980, just 50 percent did. Florida Republican Chair, husband of Moms For Liberty co-founder, is accused of sexual assault by alleged ménage à trois lover 

Trump endorses call for prosecution of Capitol Police who “beat the hell out of innocent j6 protesters” Arizona wingnut Republicans are prosecuted for refusing to certify 2022 election results 

“Want to sleep with bedbugs?” To which my reply is normally: “How nice is the hotel?”  • Amusing, Interesting, Outrageous, or Profound
    AIOP is my Lemmy page, for anything that’s (in my opinion) amusing, interesting, outrageous, or profound. It’s mostly a rough draft of this page, but you’re invited to stop by.

♫♬  MUSIC  ♫ All I Think About Is You — Harry Nilsson Disney Girls — Art Garfunkel Hound Dog  — Big Mama Thornton Lovely Day — Bill Withers Trouble Every Day — Frank Zappa 

⚰️  OBITUARIES  ⚰️John Byrne
writer, Tutti FruttiElliott Erwitt
witty photographer Helen Halpin
actress, dancerHelen Halyard
challenged Shirley Chisholm from the left Shane MacGowan
rocker, The Pogues Sandra Day O’Connor
US Supreme Court Justice Bronka Sundstrom
Holocaust survivor, mountain-climber Vassilis Vassilikos
author, *Z*

 12/2/2023