Rune @skalden@qoto.org

9/ And before Trump went into the court room… via Ron Filipkowski:

After doing ZERO campaign events during the last SIX off days during the trial while holed up at his country clubs playing golf, Trump whines that the case prevents him from campaigning.

Expanded #RightToRepair protections could bring a flood of new local small-business jobs while reducing waste, Repair Association leader Gay Gordon-Byrne tells EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley on the latest episode of “How to Fix the Internet.” https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/04/podcast-episode-right-repair-catches-car

@GottaLaff
A story about my mom and Trump.

My mom was an executive assistant for two Jewish brothers who ran a construction company in the '80s. They were in competition with Trump on some real estate deal and lost out to him. For some reason they had to make a pilgrimage to Trump Tower to go on bended knee. When one of the brothers introduced mom, Trump his usual graceful manner said, “Which one of these two Jews did you have fuck to get your job?”.

17/ Lisa Rubin:

Trump lawyer Emil Bove is a more skilled cross examiner than Trump has had in any of the three prior trials I've witnessed. But he just miscalculated badly.

Team Trump wants to establish that the McDougal agreement had value beyond suppressing her story. So Bove pressed Pecker to admit she was a celebrity or a brand in her own right

DA's next witness is former Trump executive assistant (and incidental Apprentice star) Rhona Graff.

15/ Press:

Trump's lawyer Bove: You know a private attorney can hold fundraisers for candidates without being part of the campaign?
Pecker: Yes.
Bove: Karen McDougal was a legitimate celebrity at the time?
Pecker (silent, then) No.
Bove: She was on the cover
Pecker: in 1999

We are living through the war which will define the rest of our lives. It is right now, we choose between freedom or darkness.

And while our Ukrainian heroes are fighting in the trenches, this is what the aid to Ukraine looks like: The US is not even contributing half as much as the European allies.

Is the statue of liberty still standing proud, raising her torch as a symbol of freedom? Or has America become so MAGA, that the torch has been replaced with a white flag?

Wake up America!

While Putin has not been successful in conquering Ukraine, he’s clearly had more luck capturing the Republican Party. The alignment between Trump’s GOP and Putin’s Russia becomes clearer with every passing day.
It's an existential threat to the USA. https://www.theframelab.org/p/putin-failed-to-conquer-navalny-or

<<

Google Scholar search: "certainly, here is" -chatgpt -llm (via) Searching Google Scholar for “certainly, here is” turns up a huge number of academic papers that include parts that were evidently written by ChatGPT—sections that start with “Certainly, here is a concise summary of the provided sections:” are a dead giveaway.

>>

https://simonwillison.net/2024/Mar/15/certainly-here-is-google-scholar/

#academicchatter #chatgpt #PeerReview #histodons #veilleESR

Must the instructor *always* control what students learn abd how they learn it?

As are red cabbage.

I don’t know if Putin would stop at Ukraine if victorious, but I accept that he might not, as Biden warns. However, that Russia is producing 3x more artillery munitions than the West suggests to me that NATO policymakers don’t actually believe the threat. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/russia-artillery-shell-production-us-europe-ukraine/index.html

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

Philip Pullman

It’s World Book Day and I am reminded of the need for a good read. This photograph was thrown up by my ‘phone this morning. I can remember the day and the time. It could be the start of a good story…

#memory #stories #worldbookday

Sometimes I think Mastodon is a tiny little social network. My posts get 2-3 clicks of interactions.

But every once in a while I'll come across a post with 300-400 boosts and think wow... there's a lot of people out here.

Anyway, shout out to the 2-3 ppl clicking my posts LOL

#mastodon #SocialMedia

Alexey Navalny was one thing Vladimir Putin can never be: heroic.

Navalny’s murder, carried out by Putin’s agents in an Arctic Circle prison on February 16, is a testament to this fact. The dictator could only beat him by killing him — or so he believed.

Even now, Putin continues to fear his murdered opponent. He refused for weeks to hand Navalny’s body over to his family for burial. The punishment for Navalny’s crime continued even after his death.

Let’s always remember the “crime” for which Navalny gave his life: the act of believing in democracy and freedom. His audacious and insistent hope that Russia could one day be free from the chains of corruption and dictatorship terrified Putin.

The mere act of using his voice to inspire others apparently constituted an existential danger to the dictator. https://www.theframelab.org/p/putin-failed-to-conquer-navalny-or

"The Cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry. A single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50,000 homes."

- Anthropologist Steven Gonzalez