The Supreme Court just ruled that 1) criminalizing homelessness is OK and 2) the Chevron Deference doctrine is over. It’s hard to explain why, but believe it or not the second decision is going to have a far larger, far worse effect. The Chevron deference doctrine has been one of the foundations of the regulatory state for 40 years, and eliminating it gives the courts dramatically more power to interfere with regulations made by the government. Any and all regulations
With all due respect, we have to win this election through the Electoral College.
For the sake of everyone, please vote.
For the sake of the planet, please vote.
And only one party is trying to reform SCOTUS, and it ain’t the GOP!
Now please check your registration and remind your pals, folks you know who have moved, or who might be out of country/away and need an absentee ballot.
if u love glasswork look up carlo nason’s murano glass chandeliers from the 50s-70s and just scroll thru the photos of lovely rippled hand blown glass diffusing light until your mind goes quiet
Tolkien started rewriting the Hobbit in the style of LotR, but what I really want is the Silmarillion in the style of the Hobbit.
In a hole in the fabric of the universe there lived a god.
Now, this was not one of those minor gods of bedtime stories or petty wars for heaven; this was the One God, all-loving and all-knowing, who created the world – only he hadn’t created the world just yet, which is why he was sitting in a hole in the fabric of the universe.
PLEASE GO ON
“A Silmaril! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about them, and I have only heard very little of all there is to hear, you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tragedy. Oaths and kinslaying sprouted up all over the place wherever they went, in the most extraordinary fashion.”
“This is a story of how the children of Húrin had an adventure, and found themselves doing and saying things altogether unexpected.”
“The killing of the Beleg Strongbow, by his own sword in the dark of Taur-nu-Fuin, made a great difference to Mr. Turambar. He felt a different person, and much more full of madness and despair, as he fled into the darkness and chose a new name- Agarwaen.”
“Morgoth came forth far quicker than Fingolfin had expected. He was frightfully angry. Quite apart from the challenge, no Maia ever likes being called one whom earth and heaven abhors, and of course monstruous craven lord is insulting to anybody.”
“Then something Fëanor-ish woke up inside of his sons, and they wished to go and lay claim to the Silmaril, and to throw down Dior son of Beren, and raid the gold-filled caves of Doriath, and go kinslaying again.”
For those not in the know, this is one of the Amanita mushrooms referred to as a Destroying Angel. Never, ever, ever, ever forage with an app. Especially for mushrooms.
One day when AI is finally regulated, those regulations will be written in blood
We’re currently in the “unregulated wild west cuz no one has died yet” era
The Amanita mushrooms, destroying angel included, are a horrible way to die. Particularly because, like rabies, when you first show symptoms you’re already dead.
But that’s not what makes Amanita Ocreata and it’s relatives awful.
With rabies there is no reprieve: you are sick and get sicker until you die. With these mushrooms, though, you will be sick for a while, and then suddenly you will feel like it has passed, and you are on the mend.
This is a lie. You are about to return to groaning intestinal pain, slip into a coma, and die. Because during that “reprieve” period, as Kingfisher & Wombat note, the active toxin in the mushroom is destroying your liver.
Only forage with a reliable guide, never an app, and if you’re not sure don’t pick and eat it!
Mycologists don’t give names like that as a joke, and various European countries have trained Mushroom Inspectors who check foraged mushrooms for hazards.
“All fungi can be eaten; some only once.”
Also, about 20 years ago so well before AI errors, @dduane brought home a cookbook which had a glossary of various herbs, and the one for “bay leaves” said “…also known as cherry laurel…”
Nope. Most definitely nope. Bay leaves come from the bay laurel, Laurus nobilis, and are flavourings Leaves from the cherry laurel, Prunus laurocerasus, are toxic.
We don’t have that cookbook any more - it was sent back to the publisher with a Post-It and highlighter in the proper places - but we do have the eight other cookbooks which they sent us for warning them about the error.
(No problems in any of those, BTW, and some very good recipes.)
Somewhere I have the beautiful set of 70s Recipe Cards I found somewhere in the late 1990s with a Rhubarb card telling you that the rhubarb stalk was commonly eaten sweetened as a fruit, while “Rhubarb Leaves can be cooked like any green leafy vegetable”.
Which is true but doesn’t mention that Rhubarb Leaves are toxic. Really toxic.
Also rhubarb looks at least as much like chard as a death cap looks like a button mushroom. And the two unrelated laurels? Basic leaf. So, upshot on new foods is ask someone who knows, “What do I do with this?”
“The private secretary of the film director and actor Douglas Fairbanks, Miss Ganner and the cat Doug are currently having a good time at the Ritz hotel in London. Ganner and Doug found each other recently during a walk in Regent’s Park. December 8, 1932.” Source.
via medievalpoc: Black Woman Holding Beauty Implements. Egypt (19th Dynasty; 1292-1187 B.C.E.). Terracotta, 20 cm. Oxford, the Ashmolean Museum, Department of Antiquities
“The story of ‘John Doe 1’ of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is tucked in a lawsuit filed five years ago against several U.S. tech companies, including Tesla, the world’s largest electric vehicle producer. In a country where the earth hides its treasures beneath its surface, those who chip away at its bounty pay an unfair price. As a pre-teen, his family could no longer afford to pay his $6 monthly school fee, leaving him with one option: a life working underground in a tunnel, digging for cobalt rocks. But soon after he began working for roughly two U.S. dollars per day, the child was buried alive under the rubble of a collapsed mine tunnel. His body was never recovered.
The nation, fractured by war, disease, and famine, has seen more than 6 million people die since the mid-1990s, making the conflict the deadliest since World War II. But, in recent years, the death and destruction have been aided by the growing number of electric vehicles humming down American streets. In 2022, the U.S., the world’s third-largest importer of cobalt, spent nearly $525 million on the mineral, much of which came from the Congo.
As America’s dependence on the Congo has grown, Black-led labor and environmental organizers here in the U.S. have worked to build a transnational solidarity movement. Activists also say that the inequities faced in the Congo relate to those that Black Americans experience. And thanks in part to social media, the desire to better understand what’s happening in the Congo has grown in the past 10 years. In some ways, the Black Lives Matter movement first took root in the Congo after the uprising in Ferguson in 2014, advocates say. And since the murder of George Floyd and the outrage over the Gaza war, there has been an uptick in Congolese and Black American groups working on solidarity campaigns.
Throughout it all, the inequities faced by Congolese people and Black Americans show how the supply chain highlights similar patterns of exploitation and disenfranchisement. … While the American South has picked up about two-thirds of the electric vehicle production jobs, Black workers there are more likely to work in non-unionized warehouses, receiving less pay and protections. The White House has also failed to share data that definitively proves whether Black workers are receiving these jobs, rather than them just being placed near Black communities. 'Automakers are moving their EV manufacturing and operations to the South in hopes of exploiting low labor costs and making higher profits,’ explained Yterenickia Bell, an at-large council member in Clarkston, Georgia, last year. While Georgia has been targeted for investment by the Biden administration, workers are 'refusing to stand idly by and let them repeat a cycle that harms Black communities and working families.’
… Of the 255,000 Congolese mining for cobalt, 40,000 are children. They are not only exposed to physical threats but environmental ones. Cobalt mining pollutes critical water sources, plus the air and land. It is linked to respiratory illnesses, food insecurity, and violence. Still, in March, a U.S. court ruled on the case, finding that American companies could not be held liable for child labor in the Congo, even as they helped intensify the prevalence. … Recently, the push for mining in the Congo has reached new heights because of a rift in China-U.S. relations regarding EV production. Earlier this month, the Biden administration issued a 100% tariff on Chinese-produced EVs to deter their purchase in the U.S. Currently, China owns about 80% of the legal mines in the Congo, but tens of thousands of Congolese work in 'artisanal’ mines outside these facilities, where there are no rules or regulations, and where the U.S. gets much of its cobalt imports.
'Cobalt mining is the slave farm perfected,’ wrote Siddharth Kara last year in the award-winning investigative book Cobalt Red: How The Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. 'It is a system of absolute exploitation for absolute profit.’ While it is the world’s richest country in terms of wealth from natural resources, Congo is among the poorest in terms of life outcomes. Of the 201 countries recognized by the World Bank Group, it has the 191st lowest life expectancy.”
Every time I see this I go “oh, neat pony” and scroll past while my brain chugs through the caption like the slowest computer on earth and I have to scroll back up to it
Her name is Bijou and her owner likes turning her into other things
I saw the bear and said “oh, cool bear” out loud to myself, I think I may just actually be very stupid
These still pictures are cute, but how much fun does Evil Bijou have freaking people the fuck out. I mean, “It looks like a pony/bear but it moves like a dog” could register in the human brain like those robot creatures
ALT
