Rants, Raves, and Rhetoric v.Tumblr

Professional higher education IT Geek. Internet addict. Bookworm. Athens, GA resident. https://linktree.com/ezrafreelove Memes: @sneezypb

[ezrasf]

The USDA canceled $300M in farm grants, citing fraud. Did it make up the evidence?

The agency pointed to gazebos, massages, and a $20,000 budget for pens to justify the cuts. But the groups that lost funding say those claim

Gloria Montaño Greene, former Deputy Undersecretary of the USDA’s Farm Production and Conservation in the Biden administration who helped oversee the creation of the ILCMA program, questions the validity of the excessive spending claims.  “If that dollar amount for $20,000 in pens was put in there, did they show proof of that?” said Montaño Greene. “Show the proof, right?”

My bet is the DOGE people's AI told them the $20K spenditure for pens.

They should sue. My guess is the USDA won't be able to find any evidence of it after a year+ of delays in court.

[ezrasf]

Gov. Kemp's relationship with the Dooleys

Daniel Dooley's brother, Derek, is Gov. Brian Kemp's pick for U.S. Senate.

Should have been more obvious. Kemp and the Dooleys are all from Athens. And Kemp supports his friends.

[2productive]

[neoyorzapoteca]

Celine Nguyen

[ezrasf]

Georgia officials kicked off an audit of this month’s election. What does that actually entail? - The Current

Georgia officials have kicked off a statewide risk-limiting audit to verify the accuracy of the May 19 election results, using a random samp

I wonder how many Georgians know about the election audits?

[theonion]

[ezrasf]

Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked

The exploit shows the extreme risk of offloading technical support to AI.

Hackers used social engineering approaches to trick Meta's AI Support to hijack Instagram accounts.

[theonion]

WASHINGTON—In the latest of a series of escalations in President Donald Trump’s highly publicized war on “woke,” the U.S. Department of Justice reportedly removed all mentions of justice from its website Friday. The purge follows a directive from the DOJ last week to roll back pro-justice programs and delete thousands of webpages that contained banned words, including “fairness,” “integrity,” “due process,” and “honor.”

[theconcealedweapon]

[ezrasf]

Maybe pay bug bounties? A researcher posted zero-day vulnerabilities because Microsoft failed to pay.

[ezrasf]

The Milky Way may have devoured another galaxy named Loki, and astronomers think they've found its remains

"We might have detected one of the various small systems that contributed to form our Milky Way."

I knew galaxies merged. I assumed ours previously had with others and will eventually with the Andromeda galaxy. Finding stars that came from another long ago seems pretty neat.

[macwantspeace]

comment I saw today: “the president’s remains are in excellent health.”

Elect a clown, expect a circus. “they’re building a fucking stadium on the South Lawn so Donny can hold a wrestling match on June 14th. they’re building a cage so that two grown-ass adults can dress up in costumes and pretend to fight each other.”

President Rottinghands McCankles declares himself to be in perfect health

oh, please

[bowlby4]

[ezrasf]

The Milky Way may have devoured another galaxy named Loki, and astronomers think they've found its remains

"We might have detected one of the various small systems that contributed to form our Milky Way."

I knew galaxies merged. I assumed ours previously had with others and will eventually with the Andromeda galaxy. Finding stars that came from another long ago seems pretty neat.

[miseria-fortes-viros]

just had this conversation with a friend so here’s a psa for tumblr as well: you NEED a credit card. you cannot be walking around making all your purchases with your debit card

[charledcorn]

Wait what? Why?

[miseria-fortes-viros]

your debit card is meant to be your personal access to your personal funds. use it when you need to withdraw cash from your account—that’s it. if any person, corporation, or entity gains access to your pin, they can take all your cash, and there’s no way to track it or get it back.

credit cards are insured, for one thing. all purchases made with a credit card can be disputed. if your credit card information gets leaked, the bank will cancel your card and deal with that from their end, and your money will be safe and untouched. you can cancel a debit card, but lost cash can’t be returned.

credit scores are also very important!! you need good (or at least decent) credit in order for banks to accept loan applications for large purchases. house, car, etc.. the further back your credit history goes the better. + many credit cards will offer rewards like cash back, travel points, free subscriptions.

tl;dr: if you wouldn’t post your debit card and pin on the internet, you absolutely should not be using it at checkout in person or online. you’re gambling with your life savings.

[ezrasf]

The magnetic strip? Super easy to read the card number from it. So easy Europe replaced with chip & pin a quarter century ago. I got really excited for it here in the US, but like always we just can't protect people. Instead we mostly do chip & sign, which isn't secure.

A decade ago, I was having to replace my credit card due to criminals stealing the number a few times a year. I needed multiple cards just to have options for when the primary number got stolen.

[tallahasseemp3]

please read this story of a man accidentally discovering his wife is the world's best Tetris player

[lichfucker]

[image description: an excerpt of text that says:

“It’s funny,” I told Flewin. “We have an old Nintendo Game Boy floating around the house, and Tetris is the only game we own. My wife will sometimes dig it out to play on airplanes and long car rides. She’s weirdly good at it. She can get 500 or 600 lines, no problem.”

What Flewin said next I will never forget.

“Oh, my!”

/end id]

[justahumblememefarmer]

TL;DR on the article

The husband was writing an article on classic video game records, was surprised to find out that holding the Tetris record is a bit of a big deal, and mentions how good his wife is at it.

The guy he’s talking to mentions that the record is 327, way lower than his wifes usual scores of 500-600.

They travel to a tournament, and she goes to do her attempt. Just after she beats 327, and is climbing higher, a judge brings up to the husband that the specific version she’s playing actually has a different record of 545.

She overhears that she needs to beat 500-something, and keeps going, setting the record at 841.

[weirdoughnut]

which, they later find out, is her second-best record

[mel-155-a]

There was a decent but ultimately forgettable fantasy novel I read a long time ago that had a single moment that stuck with me.

The protagonist has just won the world famous sword fighting competition in the big, rich capital and is talking to his mentor, and says something about being the best swordsman in the world. The mentor frowns and tells him that no, he isn't. He is the best swordsman out of the people that could afford to show up to this tournament. There could be a mercenary way out in the mountains, patrolling a snow encrusted fort's walls that could kick his ass and there was no way to know until he was already losing to the guy.

I think about that a lot, and how for every apparently dominant competitor, there might be a fucking ronin out there somewhere capable of destroying them.

[headspace-hotel]

Always reblog tetris ronin lady

[omnybus]

[intj-greenwords]

Also true about singers and storytellers and philosophers and theologians. You only hear about the ones that are out there.

[ezrasf]

Niece got lice from BIL's girlfriend's house again. He can't deal. Needs my wife to handle it. Because the girlfriend didn't either.

[status-quo-hater]

I think one of the funniest abortion stances I've heard was from my parents neighbor. He's a like, hard-core libertarian viking larper guy who is very tall and very fat and very bald.

He believes a fetus is human with a soul, but also its "basically attacking the woman's body" so if she wants to get rid of it, that's "basically self-defense". He compared it to shooting a home invader. So he supports abortion not as healthcare, but as killing a baby in self-defense

[status-quo-hater]

Y'know I'm so glad someone reminded me of this. Because this was also discussed.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

He brought up people consensually hurting each other, didn't go for one of the obvious answers like boxing or body mods or something, no he went STRAIGHT TO BDSM and he DIDN'T EVEN REMEMBER THE ACRONYM

[ezrasf]

Pretty sure it was a Radiolab episode that I learned the placenta has the father's DNA and acts like a parasite. It will suppress the mothers immune system. The episode was about how some women with bad autoimmune issues choose pregnancy for relief.