More than 1 in 3 Americans use whatever default search engine their phone offers them, or whatever default customer service chat is available fastest. The more clicks it takes to opt out of AI, the more people use it. Like with anything.
Not being able to drive safely was a significant part of the reason I moved to Boston. My mom in Michigan wanted me to have a car “just in case,” despite the seizure risk, because she couldn’t believe transit could be trusted.
Back from my family trip to tell you that I have a new story in @kaleidotrope.bsky.social ! "What a Big Heart You Have" is my tender tribute to Grandma and Aunt Ellen, though the characters aren't literally them. kaleidotrope.net/autumn-2025/...
I am so frustrated since I messed up my knee AGAIN. (I tripped on my way home from PT, which is just embarrassing.) I had the Jenga tower of disability management all arranged. And then I rearranged it when I couldn’t walk downhill. Now I can’t walk far enough to make it work even flat.
I don’t want to sound like I’m defending alcohol. (Me! Of all people. I literally flinched from it for decades.) But Prohibition was so very bad for public safety that I worry. Even though you are probably an entirely reasonable person who thought we were talking about health messaging
Very true! Ethanol causes a lot of deaths from drunk driving. On an individual level, it damages the liver and increases risk of cancer and diabetes. It’s not safe, but it’s a different scale. And if we’re considering policy, scale of risk matters.
Ah. I missed a step. I thought of eugenicists as wanting to kill sick people, not as wanting to transform healthy people into sick ones in order to find an excuse to kill them.
I understand the risks here, but I don’t understand their motivation. The deaths will be so distributed I don’t see how they would satisfy somebody who was trying to do racism or eugenics.
If ethanol did not intoxicate, people would be a lot less interested in it. The problem is that toxins have different mechanisms, different time scale (minutes or hours or forever)
They have jurisdiction for 100 miles from the coasts (which includes the Great Lakes) as well as land borders. That covers well over half the population.
The problem isn’t the asthmatics. It’s the insurance companies that will pay for traditional inhalers that cause more global warming, but not for the new inhalers that cause less global warming.
we simply do not have a union anymore if the president is using troops from one state to invade others entirely on the basis of political disagreements
UPDATE: Hegseth today called up 400 members of the Texas National Guard, with Gov. Abbott's apparent permission, to be deployed "where needed, including in the cities of Portland and Chicago." www.politico.com/news/2025/10...
It is very strongly frowned upon. He was charged w illegally firing the BB gun and disturbing the peace, and vandalism. (So he’d have broken the law even if he did only kill a rat.) He’s a foreigner who only lived in Brookline a month. Either he doesn’t know how to behave or he’s pretending not to.
It’s also possible that he was able to convince the cops of something because he is a lawyer with high-level bullshitting expertise. No clue. But the Brookline cops seem fairly protective about TBZ and not inclined to brush off something they perceive as a real threat. (2)
It’s obvious from Beacon St, but less obvious from the side towards Washington Sq. (And the guy was on that side, downhill, on the other side of apt buildings ~the same height as TBZ.) He may have been drunkenly thinking of the leafy suburb of Brookline as “out in the country.” Reckless git. (1)
Usually drive enlistment w intense war propaganda (Uncle Sam needs YOU to defend freedom) and high unemployment at home. Unemployment had been too low for that, but mass firings and tariffs pulled it up
