I am not kidding when I say that NYC opening the new train hall with no open seating is one of the tiny things that made me feel more OK about leaving. Same in reverse goes for Baltimore's city benches—grubby and decrepit as many of them are, every time I see one, it makes me glad I came here.

I would submit that a gerrymander by politicians saying fuck the voters and one by voters saying fuck the politicians are two wholly different animals

I would like every single person who works in software development, marketing, and sales to read ALL the replies to this thread every morning before they go to work, for at least three months.

I am once again advocating that anyone involved in tech development should be required to spend at least 2 days a month helping people in the computer area of a public library. At least half of those days should be somewhere rural and/or low income. Make them see the consequences of this nonsense.

I wish I could convey, from my own experience as a user experience designer, just how profoundly no one gives any kind of shit about users at all

Once again I am fantasizing about a world where people make the very small frame adjustment from "during the pandemic" to "during peak COVID." Maybe I'm nuts. I'm certain everyone has bigger problems. (I humbly submit that misunderstanding the COVID picture may contribute to some of them.)

Research on COVID is being hampered by a lack of interest by publishers and funding, imo. Considering we are only about 7 years into a brand-new disease, we lost interest pretty quickly.

Got in touch with her and it reminded me—if you sort of casually followed Winifred here and were wondering where she went, she has a ko-fi! So if you're the type to want Official Updates, that is where to get 'em. Plus...ebooks and stuff? General depot for most Winifred Things? You know. <3

RETVRN

BRB getting my biggest red marker to add this to the list of reasons I don't (and won't) shop at Target. This is so fucking gross.

The Substack No is simple for me: 1. Chooses to pay certain writers. 2. Won't say which writers they pay. 3. Operates on "cut of revenue," so if I buy subscriptions, *I'm* paying their undisclosed beneficiaries. 4. On "free speech": Platforms monetized bigotry but has no problem ousting porn.

KNITTED ISOPOD

So many of us are now textual Case Pollards, physically averse to pre-digested, mass extruded machine verbiage just as William Gibson's Pattern Recognition protagonist was made physically sick by fashion and brands.

Its not a business! It’s a public good! And it’s not “running out of money,” either. Republicans deliberately created this illusion by requiring USPS to prefund pensions *75 years* into the future. Literally no other agency (or business, lol) requires this.

Contrary to public perception a huge % of pregnant teenagers in the 1990s were impregnated by adult men. The younger they were, the larger the average age gap between mother and father was. Fixing teen pregnancy was in part a clampdown on statutory rape. That's what conservatives want to reverse.

- vaccines did not stop long covid, they only lower the chances of developing it - long covid is now the most common childhood chronic illness, ahead of asthma - there are no treatments and no cures, and barely any money is spent on research for treatments or cures

these posts never include the ongoing memory hole which is: - ignoring the unknown large number of people every year who are STILL developing life-ruining long covid

As ever: JUST HELP PEOPLE, YOU LOSERS

I just migrated to myatproto.social, and it was super easy. Thanks, Rudy and blacksky.

Also you can throw the I Ching or pull a tarot card without draining a protected wetland.

YES. From the depths of my "intellectual laborers are working class," low-income-all-my-life soul: Fuck this, and fuck you if you are bringing this energy into my industries.

Unmedicated ADHD: my plans for today are none of my business

Crime in the United States has dropped immensely in the last 35 years

Look at this adorable little murder-bird. Look how cute and deadly.

This has never, ever, ever worked in workers’ favor in the history of labor automation and it’s incredibly foolish and self-destructive to think you’ll be the exception.

It's weird being older. The obvious solution to the TSA lines is to abolish it. We did without that security theater for ages. It's been demonstrated OVER AND OVER to do nothing. It just funnels more money to bullshit. ICE and TSA were created wholecloth in 2003 and 2001 respectively.

I want fully staffed public pools, and libraries that are cathedrals to public goods and a society where walling yourself off with money is viewed as sociopathic.

The USPS IS NOT LOSING MONEY. THE USPS IS SPENDING TAX DOLLARS ALLOCATED TO IT BY THE BUDGET. THE USPS SHOULD NOT BE REQUIRED TO ZERO OUT ITS BALANCE SHEET IT IS NOT A BUSINESS IT DOES NOT HAVE SHAREHOLDERS. IF THE USPS IS OUTSPENDING ITS BUDGET IT SHOULD BE ALLOCATED MORE BUDGET.

Institutional medicine's widespread culture of dishonesty has been one of the most shocking takeaways from the pandemic. I knew there was a problem with bullying and authoritarianism, but the sheer scale and normalization of manipulation of science is breathtaking. #medsky #scisky #polisky

This is why all the COVID and #longCOVID aware folks have been so irate about everything since 2020. It's all unnecessary. Death, disability, it's all purely a result of letting medical policy be set by cosplaying dinosaurs, pretending to be scientists while they lock the real ones out of the room.

Holy shit, this brought tears to my eyes. This is amazing.

Anyway, "Kill someone with your car and you'll never drive again" is a message that would have immense benefit to society.

People keep saying “oh so you want OPEN BORDERS” as some kind of gotcha and like. Yeah. When I was a kid you could just drive into Canada. On accident, even. It was great, and I think we should do that instead of kidnapping children. Normalize being normal instead of being kidnapping weirdos

This article does not mention Covid even one time, and suggests maybe just all 40 yos have hypertension for no particular reason at all.

As I’ve been saying for six years, you cannot decide to shut off empathy in just one lil area (all of disabled and vulnerable people.) Endangering people for your convenience and comfort is a drug you do not do recreationally.

Last repost... As someone with a degree of care for and professional investment in "the rules": Yes! Write in the way you feel most moved to write. When you show your writing to others, you'll get feedback and can proceed from there. Writing comes before editing, and editors exist for a reason.

one of the earliest lessons in politics I learned as a kid from my parents was to always vote for a tax increase, because you're trading a dollar amount so small you probably won't notice in order to fund something important that benefits everybody. I wish that was how Democrats messaged this stuff!

I want to live in a functioning society and so I dig taxes. My contribution is small because my income is small; that is as it should be. The problem isn't *my* taxes, it's 1) wage suppression and 2) MASSIVE, DESTRUCTIVE, UNTAXED WEALTH. Drop this nonsense and commit to taxing Bezos into the ground.

This site needs a break. Post 3 good things, none of which are the cessation of a negative. 1. Tempura broccoli 2. Those smooth sidewalk squares that are stone, not cement 3. This song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2nT...

Real talk: Progressives have completely failed to adequately address the significant impacts of Long COVID, and this has left an opening for the far right to exploit vulnerable patients and deceitfully blame vaccines for all chronic illnesses.

Increasingly of the opinion that the correct answer to the Trolley Problem is "fuck you, why are you so fixated on finding reasons to justify killing people?"

For those of you following along at home, yes, the weather is on shuffle this week, sorry, we're trying to find the toggle to switch it back. (Yesterday's high in Baltimore was 80º. Today it is—*checks notes*—snowing.)

This is known as as Brandolini’s Law, a.k.a. The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle which says that it takes an order of magnitude greater effort to refute bullshit, than it does to generate it. AI accelerates this with an unknown exponent.

Submitted for the approval of whatever committee approves this kind of shit: The Story of My Entire Life

Also even a living wage cannot keep up with the fuckin terrible ass economic conditions we are in. Inflation, Tarriffs, Climate Change—-all that shit is drowning us all.

There are SO many writers I would subscribe to if they weren't on Substack. I've objected from the start for business-practice reasons (no transparency about their paid program). Platforming monetized white-supremacy material...also not great! Maybe *this* will move the needle for a few more people.

Omg no, you’re not going to make Anthropic into “resistance tech.” Nope nope nope

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people local newspaper reporters are rarified elites instead of ink-stained wretches driving their Honda Civic to a crime scene so you know don’t have to rely on Nextdoor and the police press release.