I can't quite put my finger on it, but something about this current administration makes me think that they're not putting their best efforts into things.
The words "detain" and "detention" have definitions that are mostly benign -- e.g. "detained by traffic on the way to lunch" and "grade-school kid has after-class detention..."
That's why using "was detained" is carrying water for ICE when the reality is "was kidnapped off the street and imprisoned..."
Journalism needs to be much more precise, but that would require less stenography and more thinking before publishing.
Saying "detained" instead of "kidnapped" is cover your ass journalistic training, the h journalist's, their supervisor's, their manager's, the webmaster's or publisher's. If you accuse people or add meaning without "confirmed facts," you risk losing your job because someone might call your editor (gasp!) and complain you maligned them.
I'm not being completely sarcastic here. It's easy for me to say how I would act reading how these articles use softening to play it safe. I'm not in the chair typing, worrying if a word would get me noticed or might mean I could lose my job.
Every time a court refuses to put a stop to something that is so clearly detrimental to the running of a democratic process, it encourages the next step along the lines of corruption and intimidation at the ballot box.
They are buying #elections open, shamelessly, in broad daylight. The #law, #constitution, judges, #democracy - that s all completely a thing of the past.
Γrban - four terms (since 2010) Putin - five terms (Prez or PM since 1999) ErdoΔan - three terms (since 2014) Xi - President for life Kim Jong Un - Eternal Ruler
question, chastity devices, trans/enby things (involving genitals), :boost_request:
Sensitive content
"Asking for a friend" β¦ which actually happens to be the case, but I'd also be interested in an answer
Does a transfem (or nyan-binary) creature have experience with wearing chastity belts, especially the ones from Neosteel? (With and/or without the flat shields in front.) Specifically concerning how "stealthy" they are β in terms of "not creating a visible bulge down there", to prevent situations where the belt might interfere with an otherwise femme appearance and disclose more to a random person than they should know/suspect.ΒΉ
My experience in this filed is quite limited, and mostly concerns chastity cages β¦ but those are different enough and vary hugely to not be too relevant. (More or less direct comparisons of the experience might still be interesting.)
And please, avoid replying with guesses.
ΒΉ: It happened to me a few time (without a chastity device), that unfortunate accentuation of my genitalia through clothing led to people in the streets making annoying (and insulting) comments when passing by. So yeah β¦ I get why avoiding things can be desirable.
"... and in other news, USA is being sued by a company that will be founded some time in the future, when time travel is invented. Apparently, the company will offer 'punch a nazi' tours, with exclusive rights to 1933-45. But competitors will start to offer similar tours to USA 2025-28, and..."
Anyone know where I can get pride and social justice metal signs? I've done some preliminary looking on Etsy without a lot of luck. I'm hoping to replace my flags and yard signs with something more durable and harder to steal or vandalize, and I'm surprised at the lack of metal signs with the same messages as yard signs and flags that are readily available.
Blown away by the depth and quality of #KDE companion applications. If you need a like for like, but with even more features, replacement for Windows 10 (or Windows 11), KDE on either #BSD or #Linux should be your first choice.
Can anyone help me remember a furry artist in the 90s that used simplistic cartoon style in limited colors (probably technical limitation), with a lot of art with macros?
I remember "a foxy babe with a nice pair of big hooters" specifically, showing a vulpine parent taking their infant for a stroll while two giant owls fawn over the child
Is it possibly Joe Ekaitis and T.H.E. Fox? I don't remember macros in that particularly but that "foxy babe with a pair of big hooters" sure feels like the comic's humor.
Rather than sell to a corporation or shut down, the owners of a #veterinary practice decided to convert the business into a #WorkerCooperative. This #democratic worker-owned model is emerging as a powerful bulwark against corporate consolidation and #WealthConcentration.
I was the thinking Iβd like to contribute to Wikipedia in the areas I have some knowledge. My past experiences have felt a little pointless/bruising.
Any advice for a n00b Wikipedian whoβs starting out (again)?
In France, they are making a fuss Boycotting brands like McDonald's and Tesla Protesting Trump's ways Forcing them to change their craze French customers united, now they discuss
""" The summer the fires reached the city limits. The winter when the power grids failed. The monsoon that drowned the subways. The sky turns orange, and we take photos of it. We caption it: Eerie but beautiful. We order groceries, the courier arriving in the haze, their mask the only barrier between lungs and poison. We rate the delivery five stars. """
I am becoming more and more convinced of the existence of the Typo Fairy. They sneak in when you sleep, open your files, and add random typos into your documents. They most delight in the files that have already been proofed and edited, especially on the night before submission. #WritingCommunity | #Writing
π¬ 158Β Β π 15870Β Β β€οΈ 17431Β Β·Β Theyβre scared because they know that the public is with Luigi.
Theyβre violating his rights because they need to maintain capitalism.
Keep talking about Luigi.
Hello! I'm new to Mastodon, so I'll drop a quick "about me" info. My name's Maria and I'm a librarian by day and author by night. I live in π¬π· and my favorite place to visit is the islands. My books are about witches mostly because they're my favorite creatures (forget wands and hats) and they're as unusual as it goes. However, I also write about shifters, fairytales and banshees. Nice to meet you all! #bookwitch #paranormalfantasy #authorslife #greeting
welcome to Mastodon! To find other book lovers, check out #Bookstodon hashtag. There are also a lot of writers here, #writingcommunity is a hashtag I've noticed a lot. You can follow hashtags related to topics you like to meet people with similar interests!
Bear in mind that while the Nazis built concentration camps everywhere they could (including the bits of the UK they'd occupiedβthe Channel Islands), the death camps were very specifically located *outside* Germany.
This pattern will be repeated. The worst atrocities will be conducted out of sight and out of cellphone coverage. toot.wales/@Greenseer/11425028β¦
What is more silent than the silence over the USA's plunge into Fascism and its opening of militarised concentration camps in 3rd countries on a mass scale, to hold, degrade and abuse otherwise innocent immigrants with no due legal process
There are bourgois mutterings in the media, that's true, but the silence is in the lack of any heartfelt connection to the reality and scale of the crimes against humanity that are unfolding. The silence is from their hearts
They have been for decades. Guantanamo hasn't closed down merely been forgotten. And the fact neither "side" of the US political system fixed it tells you all you need to know
I visited Ninth Fort in Lithuania, and was struck by the fact that the Nazis used it to kill people from France--as though they saw Western Europe as too close to home for extermination.
I don't think any US journalist has written as tough (and spot-on) a portrayal of the threat facing us as this Canadian, Andrew Coyne of the Toronto Globe and Mail. If you read to the end, you will be rewarded with the most flattering photograph yet of the convicted-felon-in-chief:
βNothing mattered, in the end. Not the probable dementia, the unfathomable ignorance, the emotional incontinence; not, certainly, the shambling, hate-filled campaign, or the ludicrously unworkable anti-policies.
The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.
There is no sense in understating the depth of the disaster. This is a crisis like no other in our lifetimes. The government of the United States has been delivered into the hands of a gangster, whose sole purpose in running, besides staying out of jail, is to seek revenge on his enemies. The damage Donald Trump and his nihilist cronies can do β to America, but also to its democratic allies, and to the peace and security of the world β is incalculable. We are living in the time of Nero.
The first six months will be a time of maximum peril. NATO must from this moment be considered effectively obsolete, without the American security guarantee that has always been its bedrock. We may see new incursions by Russia into Europe β the poor Ukrainians are probably done for, but now it is the Baltics and the Poles who must worry β before the Europeans have time to organize an alternative. China may also accelerate its Taiwanese ambitions.
At home, Mr. Trump will be moving swiftly to consolidate his power. Some of this will be institutional β the replacement of tens of thousands of career civil servants with Trumpian loyalists. But some of it will be β¦ atmospheric.
At some point someone β a company whose chief executive has displeased him, a media critic who has gotten under his skin β will find themselves the subject of unwanted attention from the Trump administration. It might not be so crude as a police arrest. It might just be a little regulatory matter, a tax audit, something like that. They will seek the protection of the courts, and find it is not there.
The judges are also Trump loyalists, perhaps, or too scared to confront him. Or they might issue a ruling, and find it has no effect β that the administration has called the basic bluff of liberal democracy: the idea that, in the crunch, people in power agree to be bound by the law, and by its instruments the courts, the same as everyone else. Then everyone will take their cue. Executives will line up to court him. Media organizations, the large ones anyway, will find reasons to be cheerful.
Of course, in reality things will start to fall apart fairly quickly. The huge across-the-board tariffs he imposes will tank the world economy. The massive deficits, fueled by his ill-judged tax policies β he wonβt replace the income tax, as he promised, but will fill it with holes β and monetized, at his direction, by the Federal Reserve, will ignite a new round of inflation.
Most of all, the insane project of deporting 12 million undocumented immigrants β finding them, rounding them up and detaining them in hundreds of internment camps around the country, probably for years, before doing so β will consume his administration. But by then it will be too late.
We should not count upon the majority of Americans coming to their senses in any event. They were not able to see Mr. Trump for what he was before: why should that change? Would they not, rather, be further coarsened by the experience of seeing their neighbours dragged off by the police, or the military, further steeled to the necessity of doing βtough thingsβ to βrestore order?β
Some wonβt, of course. But they will find in time that the democratic levers they might once have pulled to demand change are no longer attached to anything. There are still elections, but the rules have been altered: there are certain obstacles, certain disadvantages if you are not with the party of power. It will seem easier at first to try to change things from within. Then it will be easier not to change things.
All of this will wash over Canada in various ways β some predictable, like the flood of refugees seeking escape from the camps; some less so, like the coarsening of our own politics, the debasement of morals and norms by politicians who have discovered there is no political price to be paid for it. And who will have the backing of their patron in Washington.
All my life I have been an admirer of the United States and its people. But I am frightened of it now, and I am even more frightened of them.β
, That's a great piece of writing but the image is altered by the roll of fat on the right side of his neck. If you follow the link to the 2022 photo in the article linked below, you will see the original photo. He's still a revoltingly homely man - no need to mess with the true image to show that. newsweek.com/fact-check-unflatβ¦
We have to give a lot of credit to this account, they share a lot of the taur content we share here, I'm not sure if'n they follow all of those accounts, or if'n they just do searches for taurs periodically, but we'd have a lot less content without them. If'n you've a Tumblr and want maximum taur content in your timeline, definitely follow them.
Tumblr. Pure effervescent enrichment. Old internet energy. Home of the Reblogs. All the art you never knew you needed. All the fandoms you could wish for. Enough memes to knock out a moderately-sized mammal.
![Transcript provided by explainxkcd.com:
[Cueball stands with a keyboard next to a bed. The keyboard is connected with a wire to a computer on a desk to the right. He talks to Megan and a Cueball-like friend.]
Cueball: Hey, help me test the Trans-Consciousness Messaging Protocol.
Friend: What's that?
Cueball: I've been training myself to keep my fingers moving slightly as I fall asleep. So I can type from inside dreams.
[In a frameless panel, Cueball sits with the keyboard on the bed.]
Cueball: I'm going to sleep now. My computer will relay my messages to you as I explore the dream world.
[Cueball stands with the keyboard in a forest with tall trees. The leaves are not visible; they are above the top of the drawing. At the top, there is a frame with text:]
In the dream:
Cueball (thinking): So strange to think none of this is real.
Cueball (thinking): And yet I have this lifeline to the internet back home.
[Cueball places the keyboard on a stone, bends down, and types.]
Cueball (thinking): A chance to speak from one reality to another.
Cueball (thinking): I feel like Bell & Watson. I get to write the inaugural TCMP message.
Cueball (thinking): Let's see...
Keyboard: *Type type type*
[Megan is at the computer, and the Cueball-like friend behind her looks at his message from the dream. At the top, there is a frame with text:]
Outside:
Megan: "F1RST P0ST!!"?
Friend: Great. He's jumped straight to trans-reality trolling.](https://blog.taursnd.haus/photo/preview/640/2444104 "Transcript provided by explainxkcd.com:
[Cueball stands with a keyboard next to a bed. The keyboard is connected with a wire to a computer on a desk to the right. He talks to Megan and a Cueball-like friend.]
Cueball: Hey, help me test the Trans-Consciousness Messaging Protocol.
Friend: What's that?
Cueball: I've been training myself to keep my fingers moving slightly as I fall asleep. So I can type from inside dreams.
[In a frameless panel, Cueball sits with the keyboard on the bed.]
Cueball: I'm going to sleep now. My computer will relay my messages to you as I explore the dream world.
[Cueball stands with the keyboard in a forest with tall trees. The leaves are not visible; they are above the top of the drawing. At the top, there is a frame with text:]
In the dream:
Cueball (thinking): So strange to think none of this is real.
Cueball (thinking): And yet I have this lifeline to the internet back home.
[Cueball places the keyboard on a stone, bends down, and types.]
Cueball (thinking): A chance to speak from one reality to another.
Cueball (thinking): I feel like Bell & Watson. I get to write the inaugural TCMP message.
Cueball (thinking): Let's see...
Keyboard: *Type type type*
[Megan is at the computer, and the Cueball-like friend behind her looks at his message from the dream. At the top, there is a frame with text:]
Outside:
Megan: \"F1RST P0ST!!\"?
Friend: Great. He's jumped straight to trans-reality trolling.")
#bookwitch #paranormalfantasy #authorslife #greeting
RS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist
in reply to Dan Gillmor • • •Saying "detained" instead of "kidnapped" is cover your ass journalistic training, the h journalist's, their supervisor's, their manager's, the webmaster's or publisher's. If you accuse people or add meaning without "confirmed facts," you risk losing your job because someone might call your editor (gasp!) and complain you maligned them.
I'm not being completely sarcastic here. It's easy for me to say how I would act reading how these articles use softening to play it safe. I'm not in the chair typing, worrying if a word would get me noticed or might mean I could lose my job.
π΄ Seph π πΎ reshared this.