CRANKY OLD FART #434  [archive] JULY 2, 2024

Sunday was spent with my brother and his wife, and then Monday was
spent with my mother and sister, and both days went well (by my
standards).It’s the truth when I say that I love these people, but it’s
also the truth that I’m a hermit, so I’m simply exhausted. Being around
humans drains my batteries, and I’ve been at 0% since long before
yesterday’s last hug goodbye. Ixnay on the oubleheadersday. No more family or social events back-to-back on two consecutive days. 

“You
are entering a video surveillance area for your safety,” says a sign
that annoyed me so much I whipped out my notebook and scribbled it word
for word.The omnipresent cameras are just another way America’s gone rancid. We’re all so accustomed to
it that if things ever didn’t feel rancid, we’d wonder what was wrong.
A line must be drawn, though, at the sign’s poor sentence structure. Nobody enters the video surveillance area for their safety. 

Do you think a dog, trained to detect humans, can sniff the diff between American humans and foreign humans?  The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals says … YES! 

Punishing homeless people for sleeping in public,
when there’s nowhere else for them to sleep, is AOK by the Republicans’
Supreme Court.With this, and two
states (so far) requiring Christianity in public schools (knowing the
Supreme Court will agree), and the ‘Chevron’ overturn that’ll make
regulation of big business much less likely (when there’s been barely
any regulation anyway), the rollback of everything is rolling back so far and so fast,
it’s work even keeping track of it all.They’re dismantling even the possibility of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in America.

We’ve
always known that the cliché “No-one is above the law” is a lie. The
rich and powerful are above the law, and always have been. Now it’s official, that former President Donald Trump is above the law.What
it means is only that Trump and Republicans will get away with criminal
acts, so in practical terms it means nothing, since Trump and
Republicans were going to get away with everything anyway. The USA is a shitty sit-com that should’ve been cancelled years ago. You and me wailing about it? We’re just the laugh track.

Perplexity’s “search engine” isn’t a search engine, it’s an AI-powered “answer engine” that plagiarizes websites that have done the research and writing work. It ought to be illegal, but so should the new Google.

⚡ LINKS FOR THINKS ⚡ The climate changes, storms get stronger. “Terrifying and dystopian”: the dark realities of the Supreme Court’s homelessness decision The Supreme Court rules that state officials can engage in a little corruption, as a treat The Supreme Court’s disastrous Trump immunity decision, explained “Skeleton key” exploit enables strikingly evil outputs on almost any AI Star Trek visits the here and now [VIDEO] Wallace and Gromit and knitting The Exotica Project [MUSIC]

⚰️  DEAD PEOPLE  ⚰️Orlando Cepeda
baseballer, San Francisco Giants Martin Mull
actor, Fernwood Tonight Mildred Thornton Stahlman
saved newborn babies

  7/2/2024   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, Bleepity-Bleep, Breakfast at Ralf’s, Chuff, Dirty Blonde Mind, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, Lemmy.world, Looking for My Perfect Sandwich, A Sudden Violent Jerk, Mr Souza’s Happy Place, 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, Jeff Meyer, 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.