FirstCircle

Do you "think" so? Though I have to say, I normally hold my scare quotes "in reserve" in anticipation of the upcoming "war" with China. They'll never know what hit them - probably don't have scare quotes in Chinese, I think they're an invention of the "Military English Language Complex", the greatest Complex in the World, an American Complex, we have scare quotes like nobody has ever seen, and the radical Left, Bernie Sanders, they want to take them from us.

FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 5mo ago

Ha, kind of a "quiet quitting!"

FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 6mo ago

Don'tcha know, if you buy Apple products and support Apple with your money, that means that you "Think Different". Yeah, you're brilliant, a creator, you don't run with the crowd, and you're a traitor.

I've never understood the Apple Cult, and I understand it even less as its members choose to look the other way when the company does this kind of thing.

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FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

What's all this about buying now and paying later?

Don't do that.

I haven't given a thought to my "credit score" in decades. I hope that means that it's tanked due to the unimaginable, unearthly, inhuman crime of not routinely borrowing money.

FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

"smash"! Ooh ooh, exciting word, boom boom bang must clicky!

FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

TACO time again.

3

FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

So what's he looking for, some kind of DEI preferences from the SBA?

FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

What a clickbait piece.

"the pest control guy leading the charge" is the main figure in the article about alleged "pests". I wonder what he thinks about them? Oh, what do you know, he has nothing good to say about the critter, who'd have thought?

The school system guy is quoted as saying the squirrel issue has been “a continuous battle for them for the last 75 years.” So this has been going on for (human) generations and is just a part of life in that region. Nothing new except the clickbait.

"Minot Air Force Base, which houses bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles" is in their backyard and if the article is to be believed, the citizenry is focused on the risks and evils of a native squirrel. If so I'd say it's the citizenry that has their heads in the sand.

FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

Creating a modern do-over of Stalinism mixed with Nazism and Christian theocracy.

FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

And it's one of the few semi-affordable regions left in the state so it's growing rapidly, leading to a serious housing shortage. Construction and renovation are other industries that hire a lot of immigrants.

1

FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

Oh, I see. It was satire.

Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. (wikipedia)

Not to be confused with sarcasm. In writing it's a well-known (I'd thought) technique going back thousands of years. In pre-Idiocracy times, roughly before the widespread use of cell phones and when people read written texts to become informed and for pleasure, satire was common and there were writers who were well-known for specializing in the mode. The quality of the satire was always debatable (as with the quality of any art offering) but it was normally always recognized as satire by people who were able to read it in the first place. In the case of written satire, while it might be accompanied by illustrations to emphasize one point or another, it didn't require images or animations or the equivalent of "emojis" near the text in question in order to signify to the reader that satire was being employed. The text was self-evident as being satirical, or if not, could be understood from the context to be satire (if it was contained in a satirical book for example).

As for what I wrote, I would have expected that the absurd concepts (government-controlled turbines designed to change the weather both by harnessing the power of winds and by creating new winds by acting as giant fans; describing these "fans" as being able to move people and extremely heavy machinery with great accuracy, again under government control) and borrowed nutter phraseology along with depictions of nutter-like outrage, would have made it apparent that satire was what was on offer. I understand that some may think if to be of poor quality, but I'm surprised that some people cannot recognize the writing as satire at all.

Pre-Idiocracy this would rarely have been a problem, even when the writing appeared in a low-context medium such as an isolated web page or in a forum or Usenet posting. It may be that the satirical written form is now, in Idiocratic times, extinct except to specialized academics and historians and other educated elites. That would be a shame because it was a powerful (influential) communication tool and is a pleasure to write and to read.

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FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

A what?

6

FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

I don't know where the Wx radars are around here, but you don't have to drive more than an hour to see a hell of a lot of wind turbines sharing space with crops out on the Palouse . Those turbines absorb wind and therefore they change the weather, right? I'd be very surprised if they can't be run in reverse to generate winds - winds designed to blow farmers and their giant pickups and their farm equipment wherever the government wants them to be. Full government control. Fortunately I see that the small-town intelligentsia are starting to fight back against this kind of out-of control wind turbine government overreach.

FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

My only interaction with UW in Spokane has been through their volunteer portal. https://www.volunteerspokane.org/ This UW portal offers a one-stop dashboard for people who want to volunteer (anywhere in the region, not with UW specifically) to hook up with nonprofits/charities that need volunteers. A lot of local orgs use this portal for outreach and volunteer communications.

I've no idea if the local orgs are now going to get cut off from that service or if the national UW will keep it running and maintained. If the local orgs lose access it's going to cause a lot of pain I think - not many of them are going to have the IT skills available to replicate it or to migrate to a different volunteer platform and even if they did it will cost them money.

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FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

Desperate laborers, and, I'm guessing, no union troubles.

FirstCircle @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

Update: https://www.turnto23.com/news/in-your-neighborhood/bakersfield/witness-attorney-speak-out-following-hearing-on-hot-car-death-case

The approach the defense attorney seems to be taking is interesting. Seems to be leaning heavily on a "she's just a kid, doesn't have an adult brain yet" assertion.

Ian Bleu, who was inside the spa with his dog and a friend at the time of the incident, said Hernandez mentioned having children but never disclosed they were in the vehicle outside. Bleu described a calm atmosphere inside the business until an employee discovered one of the children in distress.

“The kid, it was like, sweating — red, purple — like, it was real bad,” Bleu said. “And then Maya walked in with the other kid and he was just, like, limp.”

Bleu told police and emergency responders that he had walked his dog near Maya’s vehicle and saw no signs that the air conditioning was running or that the windows were down, contradicting statements Hernandez reportedly made to authorities.

He also said she appeared emotionally detached as emergency crews attempted to revive the children. “She didn’t even look like she cared,” Bleu said. “We were about to cry, and the cops thought we were the parents.”

Hernandez’s defense attorney Teryl D. Wakeman urged the public not to rush to judgment, emphasizing that her client is only 20 and that the legal process is still in its early stages.

“She’s barely 20. And a charge is not a fact — it’s a charge,” the attorney said. “You would want someone to look into all the aspects of the case — medical, mental health, background — before deciding.”

Wakeman also suggested the case reflects a broader issue with how young adults are treated in the justice system, arguing that brain development continues into a person's mid-20s.