Okay so actually letting a serious topic be vague and confusing is much more scary for a child than explaining it in calm language they can understand.
Last year, I befriended a Catholic seminarian. We've gotten to be pretty decent friends. Seeing as he was staying in town for the summer and I wasn't, I entrusted him with caring for my plant.
He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"
"What?"
He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"
"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."
Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.
Listen, totally cool. My plant becoming Catholic is a great deal for her not dying over the summer. But now I must navigate this interfaith household. Keep me in your thoughts.
I should also add- I ran into my rabbi and explained the situation. I then asked, earnestly, if there was a remedy. A mikveh of sorts, or a beit din, or something.
He turned to me, sighed, and said in a very deadpan tone-- "Plants don't have covenants, Joy,"
So Theodora's a free agent according to rabbinic opinion. I guess I'll permit her to be Roman Catholic.
Hey. If people aren't aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.
They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.
Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.
You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.
This article specifically notes:
For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesnât care which VPN you use, only that itâs still the same Windows installation.
GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.
Other important quotes:
What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows âsurveillance softwareâ.
Two things back that up:
Thereâs no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Appleâs advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Androidâs works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.
Then thereâs activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: âItâs impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].â Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
Here's the complaint filed to the court, the primary source for the case mentioned in the article. You can find mentions of GDID on page 30 of the document or 34 of the PDF.
One thing Iâm still pissed at Bernie Sanders about is turning a generation against the Democratic Party. Every piece of social progress in the last 80 years, from Social Security to Medicaid to Medicare to integration to the Civil Rights Act to Title IX to Roe v. Wade to labor rights to environmental protections to public health protections to Obamacare to Obergefell, all of it directly or indirectly powered by the engine of change that is the Democratic Party. And then Sanders comes and says this whole apparatus, which he had no hand in building, is corrupt and needs to be completely replaced. Now we have countless young people who think Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the same partly because they were told that an engine of change and an anchor of stagnation and oppression are equally bad because they were fed the lie that no one in the Democratic Party does anything to improve their lives.
Nothing makes me more embarrassed about my age or generation than BernieOrBust/StillJill/NeverHillary supporters who are basically doing the GOPâs work for them and refuse to acknowledge it.
As much as I hate the ageist bullshit I see Baby Boomers come up with, I can see why they think so many millenials need to get their head out of the clouds or donât know how the real world works when I see the way people my age talk about politics.
Like, I know itâs bullshit and I still donât blame baby boomers for getting mad that young people think they know everything. Because fun story: my university campus is very liberal and very politically active, and during the last quarter there most students strongly supported Bernie SandersâŚexcept for most of us in or connected to the Political Science Department (so Poli Sci majors, International Relations majors, certain other âbureaucraticâ majors, etc.) We also loved Bernie, but we all pretty bluntly said we were voting for Hillary and thought sheâd be the best President.
Most of us were pretty blunt about how âas much as we love Bernieâs message of change, we think Hillary can actually accomplish more of it in the real worldâ. We were basing our decision on our studies of politics, of what kinds of change have and have not worked in history and why. This support for Hillary, even with our love of Bernie, came from a place of deep understanding of how politics work, of why certain policies or political goals fail, and what various political leadersâ real powers and challenges are.
We were called âover-educated elitesâ because of this.
Itâs worth noting that much of our greatest progressive reforms came from LBJ, very much a political insider, and a guy who was kind of slimy in his personal life. He was not a soaring idealist.
And some of the other progressive greats? JFK, FDR, and Teddy Roosevelt all came from long-established political dynasties
I supported Bernie in 2016 (although I did vote for Hillary in the general, and have voted Democrat every two years since), but in hindsight, I think youâre right, attacking the system is not the best move to get real reform done. H. Clinton probably would have done a good job
And letâs be real: many of them were assholes. JFK was a serial cheater. FDRâwho anyone on this blog for more than five minutes can tell you I love for his social policiesâwas antisemitic and didnât challenge racial prejudices that blocked many Black citizens from accessing those wonderful social policies. Teddy Roosevelt was an ardent supporter of, and participant in, American imperialism. LBJ used to talk about his dick to staffers. This is not uncommon, because in spite of the many jokes, politicians are people.
I donât have a problem voting for âpolitical insidersâ because *they freaking know how the sausage is made.* I want a goddamned professional in the job. Wanting an âoutsiderâ strikes me like saying, âI donât want a surgeon that went to some hoity-toity university and is friends with the the department head! I want some guy who learned how to remove appendixes by pulling himself by his bootstraps and learning by trial and error!â
do you ever find something that is so funny and you want to share it with everyone but it also requires 18 layers of context spanning things like. 90s anime. aviation history. europop. canada. in order to even remotely understand why it is so funny
in the late 90s there was an anime called initial d which was all about street racing and drifting. naturally every single drift was played for great drama and excitement.
in 1999, an italian named giancarlo pasquini released a europop song under the alias dave rogers called Deja Vu. this song was picked up as the theme song for the above anime. it in turn became a meme, a shorthand for drifting and Cool Moves as a concept.
in 1983, air canada flight 143, a full sized 767, ran out of fuel halfway to edmonton, alberta. this is not something you want to have happen to a huge airplane. the flight chose to try and make an emergency landing at a nearby decomissioned airforce base (as they were falling fast and could not make it to a proper airport), where they ran into a second problem: they were falling out of the sky at 500 feet per mile, but reached gimli (the base in question) while still too high to safely land. normally a plane would just do a big loop-de-loop to lose altitude, but they had maybe three minutes of airtime left before they hit the ground: not enough time to make any kind of circle. the pilot, therefore, decided to execute a side slip to lose speed and altitude. this is Not a move you want to do with a massive 767, because airplanes are not built for that and if you screw it up that plane is hitting the ground at a high speed at a weird angle and breaking into a million pieces. nevertheless, the captain tried it... and succeeded. the plane landed perfectly, and there were no major injuries! (a couple of people did get minor injuries when evacuating the plane after.) he did it so well, in fact, that the plane was refueled, flown out of gimli a couple days later, and continued to fly for another 20 years with the nickname "Gimli Glider."
what is a side-slip, you ask?
it's drifting.
the guy goddamn drifted his 767.
in 2008, the tv show Mayday: Air Disaster featured the gimli glider with full reenactments as an episode on season five of their show.
and so, in conclusion, the thing i have been giggling to myself about all weekend:
gamechangershow
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
blakekathryn
vaporwave
izzy806
prguitarman
dailybridgerton
