I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Monday, June 26, 2017

Linkee-poo, it was 20 years ago today, JK Rowling taught the world to read

See, this whole "the book is dead" isn't new. e-Books are just the latest in a long line of supposed book destroyers. Twenty-years ago it was "nobody reads books anymore." It wasn't "fashionable" (or, frankly, there were a lot of pompous books published where you had to have invested years of study and prior reading to get exactly WTF was going on). And then a little boy with a lightning scar appeared, and everybody was reading again. You're a wizard, Harry. Thanks, JK. We needed that.

"… United Parcel Service already is looking ahead to the colder seasons with plans to charge retailers an extra fee for orders placed around Black Friday and Christmas." I believe that will be listed on the bills as the "Happy Holidays, Fuck You" charge.

"Twenty-five years after they were convicted of a crime that never happened, Fran and Dan Keller were formally exonerated on June 20 in Austin, Texas… The couple’s prosecution in 1992 was part of a wave of cases across the country amid an episode of mass hysteria known as the Satanic Panic." A little slice of history. (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer)

"Missouri’s Senate is considering legislation that would allow employers and landlords to discriminate against women who use birth control or have had abortions. The bill, which has the support of the state’s governor, Eric Greitens, was approved by the Missouri House Tuesday." Next up, we'll build special homes for them, maybe have them do laundry for the community. (Grokked from Kelly Link)

"Wallace and her husband James are both in their 20s. In early June, they traveled a couple of hours from Knoxville, Tenn. to a free medical clinic in Chattanooga hosted by the nonprofit group Remote Area Medical. The Wallaces joined around 100 people camped out in their cars — and a few in tents — overnight to get a morning medical or dental visit… Under the Affordable Care Act, millions more Americans now have insurance through online exchanges and Medicaid. But like the Wallaces, many still lack coverage, especially in states like Tennessee where elected leaders declined to expand Medicaid." See, that's the problem, many state governors and legislatures in their spite refused to accept the Medicaid Expansion (thanks to the SCOTUS ruling that allowed them to refuse). It's in those states that Obamacare is having the most problems (and thanks to Trump and the GOP held Congress and Senate, many other states are now seeing similar problems because the insurance industry doesn't trust them to do what is right). So here is just a little reminder of what our healthcare delivery was like before Obamacare. And these people are the lucky ones, they have an organization offering free healthcare clinics, even if they have to drive hours and sleep in their cars to take advantage of it.

"Wednesday, the administration announced that Thursday's* press briefing by Sarah Huckabee Sanders would be one such no-video affair, then introduced a Kafka-esque twist by declaring that the announcement itself was 'NOT REPORTABLE.'"

"President Trump gave a straight answer on Thursday about whether he has recordings of his private conversations with fired FBI Director James Comey — No." Yeah, just a little witness intimidation going on.

"An extensive Republican database of information about 198 million Americans was obtained by a security researcher, who found it on an Amazon server, with not even a single password protecting it."

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