It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye gets hit by a hurricane.

My standard anti-Michael Steele rant, because too many people don’t know this story:

I lived in Maryland in the 2000’s, and in 2006, Michael Steele (who was lieutenant governor at the time, iirc) announced he was going to run for Maryland’s US Senate seat. He tried campaigning and, while he had some success in the more rural areas, he was heavily loathed in the cities, especially Baltimore; he was also heavily losing the black vote.

He tried to get volunteers to go into the city for him, but white people just got ignored or laughed at. He tried to get black volunteers, but only got a few; he tried hiring black people and got some more. But that turned out to be a losing proposition as well: as soon as his new recruits but cut streets, they got lectured on his real character and soon quit.

He also decided the best way forward was to hide his political affiliation. Soon the airwaves were filled with vague ads referencing the concerns of local voters - things he had never cared about (and actively worked against) in his term as lieutenant governor. All the ads prominent featured Steele “working with” and surrounded by smiling black “voters”, and ended with a firm voice saying, “Steele, Democrat.”

The yard signs and mailers were the same: Democratic Blue, no mention of actual party affiliation, and “Steele Democrat” in large white letters. (The mailers also had the smiling black people as well.) When challenged on the fact that he was not, in fact, a member of Democratic party, he claimed it was a “descriptive phrase” like “Reagan Democrat”.

Comes close to the election, and Steele really wanted people just outside the poll limits, handing out his “Steele Democrat” flyers and urging then to vote for him. Problem was, he couldn’t find any local black people willing to do that, and he really needed the flyer-people in Baltimore and some other areas to be black.

So he sent recruiters up to Philly, and the good people of Philly just laughed at him. So he turned to Philadelphia’s homeless population. He promised them that, if they came to hand out his flyers, they’d get a cool t-shirt (his campaign shirt), three meals that day, a hundred dollars cash, and he’d hire buses to take them down to Baltimore and then back to Philly at the end of the day. [When you’re homeless, intimate knowledge of the area you’re in and it’s resources are incredibly vital.]

So everyone gets bussed in, and I think they were given donuts and coffee for their first “meal”. They never got lunch, nor did get the dinner they were promised. End of the day, polls close and the promised buses never show up. Nor does the money they were promised. Michael Steele essentially trafficked a bunch of homeless people into Baltimore and abandoned them - or he tried to. There was a bunch of local uproar over this that started to build, I think it lasted a couple of days? And then suddenly Steele was there, great big smiling grin, flashing hundred dollar bills, claiming it was all a big mistake, paying people and sending them back to Philly. And I have absolutely no doubt that, if this hadn’t started to become A Thing, he would’ve left those people on the streets of Baltimore without a second thought.

Fuck Michael Steele.

Not mine, but the one where Michael Jackson is the love child of Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson caught my attention when someone posted it to reddit.

she suffered sex discrimination in her employment because she is straight.

That’s not sex discrimination. Sex discrimination is when you’re discriminated against because of your sex - you know, like how they didn’t let women be doctors or lawyers or run marathons and stuff. This is (possibly) orientation discrimination, which is also absolutely a thing, but I feel like she should lose simply because she’s claiming the wrong thing.

Copying my reply to someone else:

What did they interrupt the episode for? Because a number of companies have adopted the policy that, if the interruption is promoting something else offered by the platform - say, a different program, or another tier of service - that those interruptions aren’t really ads, because the company isn’t actually getting paid to air it. It absolutely looks and acts like an ad to the viewers, but the companies are trying to redefine the word.

What’s a good YouTube downloader these days?

What did they interrupt the episode for? Because a number of companies have adopted the policy that, if the interruption is promoting something else offered by the platform - say, a different program, or another tier of service - that those interruptions aren’t really ads, because the company isn’t actually getting paid to air it. It absolutely looks and acts like an ad to the viewers, but the companies are trying to redefine the word.

How [not] nice.

Mauritius will also be able to begin a programme of resettlement on the Chagos Islands,

After 50 years of abandonment, they’re going to have to rebuild everything from scratch. And Wikipedia notes that the islands are “All are low-lying atolls”, so any buildings or infrastructure is going to be underwater sooner rather than later.

This is nothing but a PR move.

[When launched] Prime Video with ads was given a “very light ad load,” providing subscribers “gentle entry into advertising that has exceeded customers expectations in terms of what the ad experience would be like." The executive pointed out that Prime Video with ads doesn’t show commercials in the middle of content. That could change next year.

Planned enshittification a la boiling frogs.

“X-ray safety screwdriver”.

There’s already UXO in America. In just the past four years, WWII have been discovered and detonated on three separate occasions - and that was just in New Jersey, I have no idea about what’s gone on in other states.

Just two companies, actually, Baowu Group Xinjiang Bayi Iron and Steel, and Changzhou Guanghui Food Ingredients (aspartame maker).

It could also mean that they started young, perhaps babysitting, dog-walking, or delivering papers. It also could mean that they’ve worked multiple jobs at the same time: in college, I worked two full-time and one part-time job in addition to classes, which ramped up my job numbers noticably.

GenX tv addict here. I grew up in a time when, if you wanted to watch a show, you need to make an effort to be in front of the tv when it aired. If you missed seeing it, you had to hope that if was repeated over the summer (only about 2/3’s the episodes of a continuing series would be repeated, and if a show was cancelled, that was it). If you missed it on summer repeats, you’d have to hold the show went into syndication, was carried locally at a time you were able to watch it, and then stalk the series because syndication packages were notoriously shown out of order (which is why almost all the episodes ended up with the characters being in the same base situation as they started out in).

It was the same thing if there was an episode or series you loved and wanted to watch again.

VCRs were an absolute game changer. You didn’t have to revolve your life around a tv schedule- you could go out, to go events, go shopping, have a late dinner. You could pause tv to go to the bathroom, you could watch and re-watch episodes that you enjoyed, or verify something you thought had happened earlier instead of relying on collective memory. If you missed taping something, you might still have to wait for re-runs - but there was also the chance that someone else had taped it and could loan you the tape.

Having learned the lessons of broadcast tv, I taped everything I watched, and I kept the tapes of the stuff I liked, or that had actors I liked. I could sit down today and watch all the episodes of David Soul in Casablanca or Billy Campbell in Moon Over Miami, or short-lived shows like Space Rangers or South of Sunset.

I still record and save things locally. The myth of having immediate access to everything ever produced was always just a myth.

So they were offered a 50% hike, so what? When was the last time they got a meaningful pay increase? And if it’s not the money, it’s got to be something else: remember when the rail workers were on strike and the bosses made big noise about the pay increases they were offering, only it turned out that the workers were constantly expected to work double shifts on no notice, with no real option to refuse, and they had no time off for months on end? Fuck that shit, pay the workers what they’re worth. If I can’t buy a brand new car or some bananas, so what?

… am I the only one who didn’t have problems with the headline?

It was Katrina that made me even think of doing it.

Yeah, I’m not in a flood zone, but seeing things like this is why I mounted a hatchet on my attic wall. It’s pretty certain I’ll never need it, but I can live a little lighter with the delusion that I’ll be able to hack my way onto the rooftop instead of dying, unfound, in a sweltering attic.

I’ve given money to both charities and people. Here’s the thing about donating, though: you’ll get on all sorts of mailing lists and shit, and you’ll get lots more begging letters, emails, phone calls and texts. You know those PBS/NPR donation drives, where they’re like “We just need ten more donors this hour, it doesn’t matter how much!” or those charities that send you pre-printed labels and say “Hey, just send us five bucks, that’s all we need”? Yeah, they’re harvesting your information. If you even send them a penny, they’ll be back for more, and they’ll sell or trade your information to other charities.

I give money to our local volunteer fire/ems department every year, but I don’t use their pre-printed mailer; I hand them cash when Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny come through on their trucks. I have one of those pre-paid Visa gift cards that aren’t tied to an actual person; if I do an online donation, I’ll use that and give them fake information. The money is legit, the information is good enough to pass, but they can’t come harass me for more.

This includes all donations, by the way - political, religious, civic, charity, social, whatever. Do it in cash or by an anonymous Visa gift card.