Joined, and thank you!

Duffy said that ATC resignations and retirements rose from about 4-per-day before the shutdown, to about 15-20 every day now. No it’s not going to get better quickly.

A) This is someone’s blog (it even says so in the URL). It’s been in existence for just over a year, and the very first page from it on The Way Back Machine is

Zendaya’s Powerful Quotes on Feminism & Self-Confidence - You know, I really look up to strong voices like Zendaya. Her words always push me to be brave and chase my dreams, no matter how old I am. With Zendaya 2024 quotes, Zendaya inspires us to stand up for what’s right and fight against unfairness. It’s amazing how Zendaya talks about the importance of women supporting each other. Through Zendaya’s feminist quotes, she shows us that being confident is key.

B) The “article” posted isn’t even news. Though it has a posted-date of today, the “article” itself states

The closure comes just days after Republicans pushed through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act […] Trump is expected to sign it into law on July 4.

C) I’m not going to bother searching for it, but I strongly suspect the content of this “article” was stolen from some other website and was posted to increase the click-rate - something that you’ve encouraged by posting the article here, where it doesn’t belong: it’s well over 4 months old so it isn’t “news”, it definitely doesn’t come from a timely source, and I suspect it’s “publishing” stolen content.

Weren’t we already doing this?

While I like the idea of challenges to get them used to computers, I’d also suggest balancing these with challenges that may help them outside the digital/technological world. Maybe challenge them to write a short story or a letter to their grandparents in cursive. Maybe hand-stitch a running hem, mentally add and subtract numbers, walk a quarter-mile every day. Later on, maybe have them plan out and cook a really simple meal, or do some kind of simple repair or put together a flat-pack table or something. Solder or glue something.

I dunno, it just feels like so many skills aren’t being taught to kids and they graduate with little knowledge of skills that make your life easier and less expensive - simple repairs, being able to research stuff, being unafraid to do things on your own. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud your kid’s drive and your desire to make them ready for the digitally-focused world they’ll live in, I just see too many kids graduating and needing a massive amount of hand-holding for even the simplest things.

Considering that Walmart is one of the largest corporations benefiting from deliberately underpaying their workers and telling them it’s the government’s job to feed them, I find that my field of fucks is barren.

I liked the bit where the cop claimed the “attack” left an onion string on his uniform.

They’ll just keep at it until it does change. Remember, everyone was frantic and upset the day after January 6 but nowadays it’s all just “peaceful tourists taking a walk”. Repeat a lie long enough and loudly enough - especially with the help of complicit propaganda engines across all types of media - and people will believe and defend that “reality”.

More like all the people there are chronically trying to manage the emotions of an enraged toddler so they don’t accidentally cause a ketchup-flinging incident, so they tell him what they think he wants to hear, only then he tantrums when reality pierces the baby carriage.

You posted this as a “You Should Know” clean your port before getting a new phone. Just because you have a need for constant charging, does not mean that wireless charging is an invalid option for the audience you’re taking to.

“You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancelations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers.”

Maybe y’all shouldn’t have let DOGE chainsaw the FAA, then.

I think he forgets how much New York despises him.

You could also set up wireless charging and put the phone down for a bit.

That happened to me a few years ago, just tragedy after tragedy after tragedy. One day toward the end of this horrible run, I called my best friend to remind them of something random, like “remember it’s X’s birthday this weekend” or something. Friend wasn’t home, her mom said she’d have Friend call me back. No worries.

Anyway, my friend gets home, and her mom is in the dining room having tea with a neighbor. Mom says, “Oh, hey, Aramis called, I told 'em you’d call back,” and the neighbor immediately exclaimed, “Oh my God, what’s happened to that poor person now?!?!”

I was driving along these narrow backcountry roads once, the ones with little drainage ditches on either side of the road. It’s dark out A deer comes bounding across the road in front of me. Knowing that deer travel in packs, I stopped.

Some asshole fucker in a lifted truck or SUV, speeding toward me way over the speed limit on these tiny backcountry roads, did not stop. Another deer ran across the road and the truck/SUV hit the deer and catapulted it right into my car, then kept speeding off into the night. My car was mostly totalled, as in it (extremely unhappily) managed to limp me home at about 3 miles an hour, screaming the entire way. [It was a back road and I was afraid of another asshole coming along and driving right into my car before a tow truck could possibly get to me. And there was no place on the side of the road where I could safely wait for a tow truck.]

All my friends were like, “Oh no, did you get the plate number of the guy?” And I’m like, “Initially they were too far away, then their headlights were blinding me - and how they missed seeing the deers with those lights is beyond me. And by the time they were close enough for me to see a plate, there was a deer in the way.” Then they’re like, “Did you call your insurance company?” And I’m like, “Why in the world would I do that? What world do you live in? My car is 16 years old, they’d give me $500 and then raise my premiums a thousand dollars a year for the next decade.”

I hope that fucker in the truck/SUV wrecks their next five cars in ditches and bogs and gets stuck in snowbanks in the middle of winter for the next decade. Fucker.

Story time?

They’re talking about doing away with the filibuster, which would lower the number of votes they need.

[cont]

And when one of their slaves became too ill or malnourished to work, there was a seemingly unending stream of other slaves to replace them.

End comments:

I don’t think I made it clear in my previous comment (and it’s up against the character limit, so I’m not going to go back and try to edit), that the camps inside Germany itself generally were intended as labor camps, with extermination as an eventual side-effect of the existing and incoming prisoners; and the camps outside Germany - particularly those in Poland - were established as extermination camps, with slave labor as a minor byproduct.

Also, my comment is obviously a vast, vast simplification of a process that developed over years.

And having finished my comment, I realize I went way beyond your original question, but IMO the slow development of oppression and extermination, as well as focusing beyond the Jewish people to the other six million who were murdered in the camps, is also of value. It’s why we need to focus on the groups currently being targeted by the government - not only immigrants and the trans community, but the LGBT+ community in general, the homeless, the disabled, etc. And yes, even the Democrats - the anti-Democrat language and propaganda being pumped out by the more extreme “news” channels and influencers is very similar to type of language that tends to precede civilian uprisings and ethnic cleansing against other segments of their population - see the massacres in Kosovo or Rwanda as an example.

When Hitler took power in 1933, he didn’t actually start with the Jews, & they weren’t kidnapped off the streets. The first concentration camp was at Dachau, & the first prisoners were political enemies - trade unionists (union organizers and members), Socialists & Communists. [Conveniently, not only were these groups Hitler’s political enemies, each was a group used to working with it’s own large membership to accomplish their goals; by imprisoning these people, Hitler not only neutered the political opposition, but he struck a heavy blow against civilian resistance as well.] Originally, they were simply arrested & disappeared, but yes, eventually the Gestapo became increasingly aggressive & did plain kidnappings.

Dachau was originally intended as a prison camp, but it needed to be expanded very quickly to accommodate all the newly arriving prisoners, & the ever-efficient Nazis (remember, they came to power because of the onerous penalties inflicted by the Treaty of Versailles, - the world was in the Great Depression, so the government really couldn’t afford to spend any money) decided the best way to build out the camp was to not-spend much money doing that. Instead of hiring outside workers (who might also bring out word of conditions in the camp, be inclined to transmit messages/contraband in & out of the camp, & potentially hear messages of solidarity from union workers), they decided to have the prisoners build out the camp instead. And why pay the prisoners, when they should be glad to be getting their lodging & food provided for them? The camps were destined to become slave labor camps.

Some companies, still in the throes of the Depression, & with some portion of their workforce now inside the camps & no immediate candidates to replace them, asked the German government if they could hire workers from the camps. The government agreed. The companies got cheap labor & stopped struggling in the Depression, the government got the money to spend on governing, & life improved for those outside the camps - you just had to ignore the camps & slaves themselves. And over time, other industrial-scale companies that didn’t have skilled workers in the camps turned to hiring other workers from the camps; if they didn’t they couldn’t compete in the marketplace.

Meanwhile, having neutered the political opposition, the Nazis started turning to “undesirables”. Even here, the immediate targets weren’t the Jews; the next targets were gypsies (Roma & Sinti), gay men, & Jehovah’s Witnesses, all of whom were thought to be “soiling” German civil society. Lesser targets who didn’t always end up in the camps included immigrants & the homeless; & later targets also included people with mental /physical disabilities, & in some cases just abnormalities (ie, dwarves).

Please note that I’m not saying that the Jews weren’t being targeted by the government & civilians, just that in the early days of the Hitler regime, those actions were a series of increasingly restrictive laws & increasingly-frequent/severe stochastic attacks encouraged by the government. However, Jews originally weren’t interned in the camps to the scale they were imprisoned later on; they were “encouraged” to emigrate. The major turning point against the German Jews is generally accepted as Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass), in 1938, five years after Hitler took power.

Remember that, in the 1930’s, the majority of formal political & economic organizing was done by men, so the majority of the original prisoners were also men. The government did imprison women & children, but not originally at the scale later seen, so the imprisoned women & children were a necessary burden to “cleanse” German society. It was only after Germany started World War II by invading Poland (1939), that things turned dire.

In the newly-occupied territories, yes, the occupying forces kidnapped & killed/imprisoned those suspected of being enemies of the Germans, or just against what Germans thought their society approved of. They established camps for those they targeted in occupied territories, & forced occupied Jews into ghettoes, which were eventually “liquidated” either directly (mass killings) or indirectly (the people in the ghettoes sent to camps).

The camps became a problem. Established quickly, there were too many people to properly feed or care for. Medical attention was essentially non-existent. Conditions in the camps meant that diseases periodically ripped through the populations there. Since the Germans determined to imprison everyone in their target groups, that included young children, the very old & infirm, the chronically ill, etc. The camps became crowded, with a noticable percentage of people who simply couldn’t work to “earn their keep”. In merciless fascist logic, it was more “efficient” to kill those people and direct whatever meagre resources they were willing to allot to the camps to go their slave laborers.

Lock screen ads are coming to all smartphones. Because you know that, once they get one group to accept it, they’re going to shove it onto everyone.