Brian Beach has moved @bwbeach@qoto.org

In the light of current concerns about insect populations, perhaps it is time to bring out this excellence illustration again

I spent the night at the campground in Möhlin, Switzerland, close to the river Rhine. My two neighbours came with their spectacular Hase tandem bike. The steering person sits upright in the back, while the other person sits in recumbant-bike fashion in the front. Moreover, they also have a trailer; what a combo! I asked them for letting me take a photo of the really unequal bikes' architectures: The minimalistic Brompton, and the super-trouper Hase tandem.
#Brompton #BikeTooter #BikePacking

If you tie some aspect of your identity deeply to a set of professional competencies AND don't solve the problem of a relatively few privileged people being the only people in your professional field who get to define those competencies, how you think of and feel about yourself in a deep way is gonna get held hostage at some point to those folks' baggage and that, my friends, is just really painful.

We have some state elections coming up in Germany and the extreme right AfD will probably get some unsettlingly high results.

A lot of analysis both domestic and international will try to find reasons why and trip over themselves in looking for excuses.

But ultimately, in order to vote for an openly and well documented fascist party, the voter has to at least be accepting of their ideology and policies, no matter what specific thing tipped them over to actually cast that vote. We have a name for people who are accepting of fascism:

Fascists.

By acting as if fascism isn’t right in the middle of our society we give it space to grow unchecked. It never went away after the fall of Nazi Germany, we just got really effective at ignoring it.

A lot of things would be solved pretty quickly if Americans, including the so-called journalists, would constantly keep the question in the forefront of their minds, "What would happen if Kamala Harris did this thing that Trump did?"

What would the right say? How would the media cover it? What would your own personal reaction be? #media #USPol

"Remember just about a month ago when the news media told you of a 'new softness' emanating from a 'changed Donald Trump' and lauded his call for 'unity' in a Republican convention speech in which he managed to go a few moments at the very beginning without insulting anyone before going on to express his deep admiration for Victor Orban and Kim Jong Un?"

~ Jamison Foser

#KamalaHarris #Trump #Democrats #Republicans #media #BothSidesism #FalseEquivalence
/1

https://www.findinggravity.net/p/donald-trumps-new-tone-is-a-lot-like

The latest data suggests
that at the moment
1 out of every 41 people in the US
currently has COVID,
but as I look at the 50 people
gathered in this training session
I cannot tell if any one among them
currently has COVID
though I know that I
am the only one wearing a mask.

The better the software designer, the less they have to design up-front. The better the software designer, the more moves they have to get out of untenable situations. Ironically, it's exactly the better software designer who would make better design decisions on speculation, they just choose not to.

Next time you hear, "But we have to make this decision *now*!" ask yourself, "What skills would we need in order to *not* have to make this decision until later? How can we learn those skills?"

Dear Members of the #FourthEstate ,

I'd like to point out to you:

1. Trump has not had any sit-down interviews with you (only staged, mock pressers).
2. #Trump does not have ANY laid out policy except Project 2025, which he continues to deny having anything to do with.
3. #Trump does not provide any policy substance except insisting he will use his office to get revenge on his enemies (which should be blaring from your headlines as antidemocratic).
4. YOU do not press #Trump when he does not answer your questions but tries to give you word salad and crap, or he gets angry and insults you.
5. YOU gloss over that Trump is the first former president and presidential candidate to be running as a convicted felon on 34 counts and held liable for sexual assault.
6. Where exactly IS Melania?

All of these things, and he has been running for office since 2023.

Now, you seem to feel fine parsing out substance in #Trump where there is none and ignoring his firsts, but demand and chastize #Harris2024 for not, in only a month since her announcement to run and the DNC (a MONTH!), giving you a fully outlined policy (though you have the Democratic 90-pg outline), not sitting down for interviews (first one now scheduled with CNN as she continues to push at full capacity even though SHE'S BEEN RUNNING FOR A MONTH!), not talking to you on the tarmac (she did and you NEVER ask her questions about her strategy or policies, only about Trump's antics and WWF, rrality-tv nonsense), having ALL her family out campaigning for the ticket, while pointing out how she will be the first woman, first person of mixed race president.

THAT is called a #Double-Standard , and it REEKS of sloppy #journalism .

#Journalists #Media #News #Harris_Walz2024 #Election #Election2024

That horrifying moment when you're looking for an adult, but you realize you are an adult. So you look around for an older adult, an adultier adult, someone better at adulting than you.

I’m reading and watching so many people trying to figure out how to grapple with an economic system that produces outcomes that threaten to eat us all alive.

And I think, as humans, we want there to be an evil cabal somewhere that is plotting against us, that has actual power and control.

And I suspect that’s actually not true. Sure there are people with power and for sure some of them are plotting against us, project 2025 is a literal example of that, but it is also an example of them not having control. If they did, they would just do it, they would have no need for all this mess in public.

Here I think maybe Dan Davies in The Unaccountability Machine is right: the system, which is our societies and economies on a local and global scale, this system has evolved over centuries, and has emergent and adaptive behaviors. Behaviors that aren’t fully in anyone’s control.

And I think maybe this instinctive reach for an enemy to fight is distracting us from more analytically understanding this system.

And I think understanding the system, at least more than we do now, is critical to changing it.

And without that level headed analysis no amount of revolution will avoid it falling back into its base outcomes.

To quote Kamala’s mother: “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you”

It can be lonely to make decisions (for yourself, your family, for communities and organizations you hold responsibility in) on the basis of where we are in the polycrisis when...

ALWAYS BET ON WORKERS

After minimum-wage hike, California has more fast food workers than ever

https://www.salon.com/2024/08/26/proving-them-wrong-after-raising-minimum-wage-california-has-more-fast-jobs-than-ever/

Okay, I finally got too annoyed about idiot MAGA zealots incorrectly using the words “coup” and “Marxist” while insisting that “America is a republic, NOT a democracy” and wrote about why such abuse of the English language is both stupid and dangerous. https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/maga-corruptions-of-the-english-language

Allowing police officers to submit LLM-written reports reveals a remarkable misunderstanding of what LLMs do, a profound indifference to the notion of integrity in the communications of law enforcement with the justice system, or both.

Given how readily subject to suggestion human witnesses—including police officers—are known to be, this is a disaster.

Yes, police reports aren't always the most accurate, but introducing an additional layer of non-accountability is bad.

https://apnews.com/article/ai-writes-police-reports-axon-body-cameras-chatgpt-a24d1502b53faae4be0dac069243f418