Lmst

zceline boosted:

nothing like preparing your burner phone to enter your own country. peak 2025.

zceline boosted:

I’m officially done with takes on AI beginning “Ethical concerns aside…”.

No! Stop right there.

Ethical concerns front and center. First thing. Let’s get this out of the way and then see if thre is anything left worth talking about.

Ethics is the formalisation of how we are treating one another as human beings and how we relate to the world around us.

It is *impossible* to put ethics aside.

What you mean is “I don’t want to apologise for my greed and selfishness.”

Say that first.

zceline boosted:

5 years ago: “An incalculable loss”

Today: Banning masks and restricting vaccine access

NEW YORK TIMES (2020): U.S. DEATHS NEAR 100,000, AN INCALCULABLE LOSS

zceline boosted:

I’m annoyed but not surprised Mozilla is killing Pocket, but I am big annoyed that I found out via Mastodon. I’m a paying subscriber and they haven’t said shit. Rude.

zceline boosted:

Thank you #NSF National Science Foundation for 75 years. 250 staffers were able to gather for a NON-OFFICIAL commemoration photo out to the west side of the building, May 20, 2025. Quite an effort by people who still do their best in the US at the federal level. Quite a story here, too.
https://www.science.org/content/article/photo-subversive-nsf-staff-overcome-obstacles-75th-anniversary-portrait
#Science

Photo to mark the 75th anniversary of the US National Science Foundation, with 250 staffers posed to the side of the building in a non-official photo taken on the staff time by an amateur photographer so that the senior management who were not allowed to be present could allow this short event. The building is about 18 stories tall, the meeting area is all bright green grass and there are other buildings and a cluttered landscape around the people and building, with cloudy skies.

zceline boosted:

Waste. Fraud. Abuse. 1/...

Via Kyle Griffin:

The CBO just released a score on Republicans' existing mega-package and found that the GOP budget plan would increase the deficit by $2.3 trillion over a decade.

It would boost the incomes of the richest 10% of Americans while lowering the incomes of the lowest 10%.

zceline boosted:

It’s been fun watching the unlikely rise of MCP as a standard, which is open and messy in a way that mimics the dynamics of the good parts of Web 2.0. Maybe something interesting will happen! https://www.anildash.com//2025/05/20/mcp-web20-20/

zceline boosted:

Trump’s Tax Scam targets Planned Parenthood—cutting breast exams, birth control, STD testing, prenatal and mental health care. And it’s not just Planned Parenthood. Republicans are attacking the clinics that women rely on. This was never just about abortion—it’s about gutting women’s healthcare.

zceline boosted:

Under anti-vaccine advocate RFK Jr, FDA to limit access to COVID-19 shots
FDA will require big, pricy trials for approvals for healthy kids and adults >65.
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/05/under-anti-vaccine-advocate-rfk-jr-fda-to-limit-access-to-covid-19-shots/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

zceline boosted:

I do not understand why everyone is not screaming at this point: banning words is a clear violation of the First Amendment. It’s not even a close call; yes, even with the limitations that are permitted.

Why institutions and businesses are caving is unfathomable, UNLESS they actually support the fall of the USA and rise of White Nationalist Trumpistan.

I'm sorry random LinkedIn invite person, but 'Vibe Check' is not a great intro if you actually want me to read your message. Oh, and that connection request? Yeaaah no.

zceline boosted:

I made a political cartoon

A cartoon named "the overton window", showing a house, but the window is drawn to the right of the house, outside of the house itself

zceline boosted:

This is the way.

A high school freshman track athlete took second place behind a trans athlete, and a Republican leader used the situation to push hateful propaganda. The girl responds:

"I don't feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points... No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby."

May 14, 2025
Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, recently used my second-place finish in the 1,600-meter run, and that of my teammate in the 800-meter run, to malign Soren Stark-Chessa, the trans-identified athlete who finished first.

One of the reasons | chose to run cross-country and track is the community: Teammates cheering each other on, athletes from different schools coming together, and the fact that personal improvement is valued as much as, if not more than, the place we finish.

Last Friday, | ran the fastest 1,600-meter race | have ever run in middle school or high school track and earned varsity status by my school's standards. I am extremely proud of the effort I put into the race and the time that | achieved. The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race. I don't feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points.

We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school. Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are.

Anelise Feldman
Freshman, Yarmouth High School
Yarmouth

zceline boosted:

Official 1: "Sir, why don't we just gift him the plane?"

Official 2: "You mean THE plane? THAT plane?"

2: Yes, sir. With everything already installed and embedded.

1: It's an interesting suggestion, but do you really believe that he's stupid enough to accept a gift like that?

2: Sir, he kept overflowing cardboard boxes of top secret United States documents piled up in a guest bathroom at his home.

1: Get on it. You're promoted.

zceline boosted:

Yes, It Is Just Like The Nazis
Hey so remember Anne Frank? The Jewish young girl who hid in an attic and was killed by the Nazis? The emblematic person we think of when we think of victims of the Holocaust?

She did not die in a gas chamber or in a death camp. She died in a temporary' detention center for the mass deportations which preceded the death camps.
She was in that camp because a patriotic neighbor ratted her out to the German deportation force. She died, not of a bullet to the back of the head or choking on gas, but of typhus. She contracted typhus because the Nazis couldn't realistically deport people at the rate they wanted to, because before the death camps their infrastructure couldn't handle the sudden influx of ethnic minorities they had decided to imprison, and because they didn't care about the consequences of that so their deportation detention centers were unhygienic and prisoners were underfed and overcrowded.

And she was picked up by the deportation force not because she was an illegal citizen but because, just like the US is doing with asylum seekers, she was part of a formerly recognized class of citizens who were legally redefined to lack citizenship by a new administration.

Anne Frank is exactly like the children who have already died in the United State's detention camps. Exactly. Down to the very last detail. There. Is. Not. A.
Single. Difference.

So unless you want to fucking tell me that Anne goddamn Frank was not a victim of the Holocaust, y'all can shut the fuck up with that "stop making concentration camp comparisons, you're diminishing the suffering of the Holocaust" bullshit.

Its also worth noting that her family TRIED to flee to the US and was denied. She was in that camp partly because the US refused to let her refugee family immigrate.

zceline boosted:

It's going to be a fabulous weekend in Petaluma! ✨ We hope you'll join us tomorrow at the annual Inclusion Festival hosted by Inclusive Compass: www.eventbrite.com/e/inclusion-... #Disability #Petaluma #Solidarity

Inclusion Festival 2025

zceline boosted: