So I have a strawberry cake recipe I have made to great enthusiasm and acclaim:
My husband loved his mamaw's strawberry cake recipe. He thought no one could duplicate it. I made it, and it’s just as scrumptious as he rem
But, sadly, it is no longer strawberry season. It's PEACH season. So @tessacrowley said, at great volume, YOU NEED TO MAKE IT WITH PEACHES!!!
After schlepping out to Apex Orchards for fresh, just picked peaches, I have made a peach cake. I withheld half a peach, diced it up tiny, and will mix it into the buttercream frosting.
Today marks 6 months since Alex Pretti was shot. I joined my local community to grieve and reflect. It was good to hold our trauma as a group.
It seems everyone knows of the violence and anger in Minneapolis during the surge. The protests, the flung dildos, all the resistance and fighting. These were good and necessary.
But I don't think as many people heard about the kindness in Minneapolis. In this crisis and deadly cold, Minneapolis made sure to care for her own.
Free food was all over. Local restaurants opened their doors for anyone who needed a meal. The very same local restaurants that were struggling financially due to the ICE surge. Local organizations and churches hosted soup stands outside. Those patrolling, threatened by ICE, and the unhoused came and had hot meals.
Businesses put up signs to explicitly invite anyone in to escape the cold. To have a warm chair to rest in before going back out to watch for ICE.
On Nicollet, a memorial for Alex Pretti was put up. Cones were erected to redirect traffic around it. It's still there. A group has worked together to maintain it all this time. They remove dead flowers, water pots, protect notes from the rain, and everything they need to to honor Pretti and those coming to mourn. During the surge, nearby businesses offered flowers that you could lay at the memorial.
Neighbors organized events. Block parties, coffee meetups, food shelves, group therapy, free markets, grocery deliveries... the list goes on. The city was committed to letting each other know that no one was alone in this. Everyone was trying to hold each other in the ways we could.
I could go on about a hundred different small ways my neighbors connected and supported each other. I could go on about what my friends were doing in the suburbs. But I just want everyone to remember the kindness. You won't get the full picture of Minneapolis this winter without it. Alongside everyone screaming "FUCK ICE" was another saying "Thank you. Would you like some soup? This one is vegan."
Text of tweet from Hunter Biden on Trump's "speech" at the White House Correspondents dinner:
I watched Trump’s speech at the Correspondents’ Dinner last night.
It’s hard to articulate how sad it made me.
Sad and embarrassed and exhausted.
Here is the thing about a man who is a joke. He can’t tell one.
People think humor is a talent. It isn’t. It’s a capacity. To make someone laugh you have to be able to laugh at yourself, and to laugh at yourself you have to step outside of yourself and see what everyone else sees. For one second you have to be just another person in the room.
Most people can do this by the time they are nine years old.
He has never once managed it. Not in fifty years of cameras. Not for a second.
That is not a quirk. It is a symptom. The muscle that lets you tell a joke is the same one that lets you feel what another person feels. A man who cannot survive being laughed at cannot imagine being anyone but himself. He will only ever be generous when it is photographed. He will only ever be kind when it is filmed.
There is a name for it.
So he stood up there and did what he always does. He hit down. He made jokes about people’s weight. He made jokes about their intelligence. He made jokes about how women look. He read out the names of people he doesn’t like, and mocked them. Always mocking. And when no one laughed he blamed his speech writers.
The cruelty dressed as humor has worn so thin.
And for the 30% of you still in the cult who will inevitably call me a crackhead and blame it all on my Dad, all I can say is please, for the love of God, open your eyes. Wake the fuck up. Have some dignity. Have some pride.
Joe Biden wasn’t standing at that podium last night. Donald Trump was.
And at the end of it he put on a red hat that said Trump 2028 and told the room he was running again. No one laughed because everyone knows he has no intention of leaving.
Just another joke at our expense.
#wait sentinel aus are based on an actual show???#I thought they were just one of those inexplicable Fandom Things - im WHEEZING, i love this so much
never Once have I ever seen a reference to an actual extant intellectual property, it’s always “what if we had this super complicated codependent pseudo-magic sci-fi thing going on” and then just running with it OTL
i do not have the spoons to FULLY get into it, as it demands, but the one with the military haircut (he’s a cop, a “protector”, c’est la vie) is Jim Ellison, former Army Ranger, repressed fool. curly haired bb is Blair Sandburg, an anthropology grad student who realizes Jim is a Sentinel of legend, latches onto him like a remora, and Jim basically leans on Blair like a crutch all the while pretending he doesn’t care for him in a very “I made you a friendship bracelet” “ugh gross” “well you don’t have to---” “shut up I’m gonna wear it” way
they were handsy
HANDSY I SAY
they STARTED handsy
they moved in together in like. ep one.
they become partners in the cop sense, they do a lot of gift of the magi shit for each other, every time I start to think of the stupid shit they do for another I remember More Weird Shit, codependent fucking weirdos
Okay, I absolutely MUST chime in For The Sentinel which NEVER gets the respect of its peers just because "the plots were a little convoluted" and the "central premise wore a little thin as the seasons went on." those men were in love. THOSE MEN WERE LOVERS!!!!!
What you need to know about The Sentinel is that the very first episode is about Jim Ellison acquiring mystical powers. YES I want to be clear, the way he acquires these powers is "problematical" and "not great, respecting indigenous cultures wise" but okay, so he's got these powers that make all of his senses amped up to dangeous levels. he can hear things no one else can hear, he can see things like he's fucking legolas, you get the deal.
so he goes to the doctor to be like "i feel weird" because of course, and Blair Sandberg, twink anthropologist to the stars, BREAKS SEVERAL LAWS to get in Jim's exam room and say—i know how to help you. i know what's wrong with you. i know how to make life better. and jim ellison looked at the little twink man and said yes....YES to love YES to life YES to living in a 1 bedroom LOFT apartment together. YES to being soulmates and life partners! YES I'LL MARRY YOU!!!!!!
This is the ORIGINAL big gruff german sheppard/lil yapping chihuahua pairing. And fandom looked at this show and said "this is good. i will build a kingdom upon this land. from now on, these are the two genders: big, angry, powerful, forced to their knees by circumstances beyond their control AND small, jokester, has skills INVALUABLE to Big, bad self worth. And then so the sentinel/guide aus RULED the pervert community, and everyone rejoiced.
And then SPN looked at this, and said "but what if the guides also had wet butts" and u kno what? innovation is CRUCIAL.
my friend had Sentinel VHS tapes acquired from someone on the internet and basically every episode featured tough military man Jim being driven to his knees in agony verging on madness bc of his mystical senses being overwhelmed and tiny commie academic Blair soothing him and healing his agonies by touching him (and communicating with him via psychic leopards????) so they could save lives and the show wasn’t GOOD but my god it was something
God this was such an important fandom to me. My Sentinel friends are my family now, more than a quarter of a century later. Merryish, who first offered my fanfic a home* in —1997? 1998?—taught my kid to snorkel 20 years later. Flummery are my kid’s fairy godmothers. I basically married astolat 25 years ago. And every time I see one of you Sentinel people online (waves to a bunch of you who reblogged this) I feel like I’ve run into someone from the old country! That fandom literally changed my life.
But also, fannishly, so inventive! Some of the first vids I ever saw back before there were computers –VHS vids, wonderful ones. (Shout out to GloRo!) Great great fanfic and art. I still have gorgeous zines from this period. And the loft tape! Go to fanlore and look up the loft tape you guys!!
*before the AO3! When you needed someone to host your fic! This is part of why we built the AO3! So many (so many!!!) Sentinel people involved in building the AO3! Astolat built the Sentinel archive, 852 Prospect, a decade before the AO3, that was our first practice archive software. That software was adapted and used in other fandoms like due South. Seah and I were both DS archivists. This is all part of the story of how the AO3 came about. The sentinel/guide trope is the least of it. The Sentinel’s impact on fandom is totally outsized considering what a minor show it was. But it had a great concept that it did not fully exploit, which I think is in fact, what an amazing fandom needs.
Sentinel is where I followed @cesperanza to after I adored her work in Due South.
I honest to god went back to school and got both a post-baccalaureate and a goddamn MA in ANTHROPOLOGY because of this show. Not even lying, this actually happened. And spent a few years as an adjunct anthro professor. And I know I'm not the only one, I know of at least one other fan friend, at the time was already a retired computer programmer, who got an MA and PhD in Anthro because of this show. When we say this show changed lives, we are not exaggerating.
Sentinel was where I first came up with Hamill's Law: the quality of the fanfic of a show is inversely proportional to the quality of the show. Because by gods that show was awful and the fanfic was indescribably wonderful.
What if we banned all advertising? Not regulate it—abolish it. This proposal would transform manipulation machines, and maybe save democracy
Even as an advertiser (especially as an advertiser), I am convinced that outlawing advertising is the best thing we can do for our world now. More than gun control. More than tackling climate change. More than lowering the price of eggs.
Removing these advanced manipulation tools would force everyone—politicians included—to snap back into reality. By outlawing advertising, the machinery of mass delusion would lose its most addictive and toxic fuel.
I started out reading this smugly saying to myself yeah, right.
But by the end I'm sold. Let's ban advertising.
We can start small, maybe with city ordinances. Then roll it out county wide, then at the state level. Once other states see how quiet and sane things can be, they'll adopt the ban too. The ones that don't will remain snarling islands of rage & delusion until the people move away.
“The chaotic response to cyclospora, which has sickened more than 4,000 people in the US with thousands more thought to have also been affected, has been highlighted by the attempts to identify and halt the source of the outbreak. The FDA identified lettuce from Taylor Farms, a supplier to Taco Bell, as being linked to the outbreak, only to then backtrack. Taylor Farms has said that the FDA apologized to the company for this, a claim that the FDA has denied. The federal food regulator still maintains there is strong evidence connecting Taylor Farms, which has recalled its lettuce, to the outbreak. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, said last week the outbreak was “under control”, even as the FDA expanded its investigation into 7,400 potential cases across nine states.”
—
Former top US food safety official says US mismanagement of cyclospora is approaching ‘a catastrophic level’
Stupid fucking MAHA and MAGA fucks are the dumbest fucking motherfuckers on the planet.
Rubio report on Cuban subversion names Zohran Mamdani, Amy Goodman, Hasan Piker + orgs like DSA and Amazon Labor Union
“Many of the most significant upheavals in recent American political history — from the George Floyd riots to the rise of Antifa to the explosion of pro-terrorist activism on American college campuses — can be linked, in some way, shape, or form, to Cuban influence,” the report says.
As for who these supposed agents of Cuban influence are, the report is remarkably explicit. It names people like Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream fame), Mayors Zohran Mamdani and Karen Bass, media figures like Amy Goodman and Hasan Piker, and organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America and the Amazon Labor Union.
The implication is clear: Secretary of State Marco Rubio thinks there should be a modern-day blacklist of the political left in America. In fact, the report explicitly mentions the “blacklists, McCarthy-era investigations and prosecutions” of the 1950s and their effectiveness at dismembering the Communist Party USA.
The 100-page report, titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” was released this morning.
in all seriousness though this is a terrifying escalation in rhetoric, and frankly, i would call it genocidal language being aimed at Cubans in particular, but Latin America more broadly.
There’s some confusion about why this is happening in the tags and I want to quickly explain - it’s for the same reason Nazi Germany presented the Soviet Union as the source of its domestic “Jewish problem” and socialist labor organizing: to justify a military invasion (in our case, Cuba), to justify genocide of the domestic representative of the alleged foreign threat (in our case, Latinos) and to justify domestic repression of the revolutionary left so as to weaken any possible resistance to the two former ambitions.
They name the George Floyd Uprisings, Antifascism and pro-Palestine campus politics for the same reason Nazis and Neo-Nazis see the specter of the Jew behind every social movement for justice and specifically communism. They are conflating migrants, a foreign power and communist politics for the same reason the Nazis did with Jews and the Soviet Union. They called that worldview “Judeo-Bolshevikism,” that was their driving conspiracy. Today it is “The Great Replacement” that is their rallying call.
Don’t let Hasan or Ben and Jerry’s name distract you from the larger move being made here. They want to attack any dissenting voice, but it’s towards a rational goal, the ones mentioned previously.
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 doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s 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 “surveillance software”.
Two things back that up:
There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s 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 there’s 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: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
seconding this!! linux mint (I'm on Cinnamon) looks exactly like Windows 7. And it comes with Libre Office, Firefox and Thunderbird and it won't crash every time you look at it crosseyed.
I want to think about TRAINS I want to write about characters on TRAINS I want to ride on TRAINS I want adventure stories and runaway stories but on TRAINS
Some people have made the mistake of seeing Shunt’s work as a load of rubbish about railway timetables, but clever people like me who talk loudly in restaurants see this as a deliberate ambiguity, a plea for understanding in a mechanised mansion. The points are frozen, the beast is dead. What is the difference? What indeed is the point? The point is frozen, the beast is late out of Paddington. The point is taken. If La Fontaine’s elk would spurn Tom Jones the engine must be our head, the dining car our aesophagus, the guards van our left lung, the cattle truck our shins, the first class compartment the piece of skin at the nape of the neck and the level crossing an electric elk called Simon. The clarity is devastating. But where is the ambiguity? Over there in a box. Shunt is saying the 8.15 from Gillingham when in reality he means the 8.13 from Gillingham. The train is the same, only the time is altered. Ecce homo, ergo elk. La Fontaine knew its sister and knew her bloody well. The point is taken, the beast is moulting, the fluff gets up your nose. The illusion is complete; it is reality, the reality is illusion and the ambiguity is the only truth. But is the truth, as Hitchcock observes, in the box? No, there isn’t room, the ambiguity has put on weight. The point is taken, the elk is dead, the beast stops at Swindon, Chabrol stops at nothing, I’m having treatment and La Fontaine can get knotted.
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 doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s 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 “surveillance software”.
Two things back that up:
There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s 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 there’s 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: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
All this stuff is probably true, but it makes it sound like the workers are contaminating lettuce.
Wide-spread produce contamination happens through dirty irrigation water that sewage has leaked into.
Even if workers were taking shits in the field, it wouldn’t be enough to make these events and someone with intestinal diseases wouldn’t last long out doing manual labor in the hot sun (ask me how I know).
Food borne illnesses are almost always from shortcuts companies do to save a few bucks (don’t test the water, don’t test the produce, etc.)
"Wait, you're a Christian? Like, born and raised? Wow, um, you know what American history is like, right? You know the country has only existed for 250 years... Yeah it's fine I'm not like against Christianity or anything but like, you don't support the US or anything, right? The US military is responsible for countless deaths so you support Al Qaeda, right? And the actions on 9/11? Look, I really don't feel comfortable having a Christian in my DnD roleplay group unless you can tell me that you denounce America. No, not the American military, America. What do you mean it's complicated? How can there be hundreds of years of history when America has only existed for 250 years what do you mean? Yeah there's Christians from other countries but they're all connected to America. I went to a bakery the other day and found out they were serving American pastries so I left they need to know that's not okay. I wouldn't hire an American babysitter, how could I when the American military is killing babies, they're complicit and besides I wouldn't want them filling my kid's head with American propaganda. That's why I find it so hard to trust Christians unless I can find out their stance on America. And I can't trust even the 'good' Americans because they obviously support Trump and the military's actions. They live in America and he's the president so obviously they voted for him, if they don't like him then they should show that by leaving. Honestly staying in America just shows me that they're a secret Trump supporter even if they try to lie and say they aren't. Look at my art piece! It's a church burning. Well, obviously it's an American church so it should burn. Look at my patch I put on my battle vest, it's a big X over a cross. No, it's not talking about Christians! It's about America because America uses a lot of cross imagery. Well it's not my fault America co-opted the cross so now I just associate crosses with America, you should recognize that not every cross is about Christianity if someone is defacing a cross you should assume it's because of America. Americans and Christians are all privileged white people anyway."
If you are responding to this post with "Well, I hate America anyways" then you are either missing the point or being willfully ignorant. It would be absolutely insane to tell a random Muslim person you can't trust them unless they denounce Iran or the Taliban, or that you can't trust a random Saudi Arabian to babysit because obviously they're indoctrinated and going to fill your kid's head with propaganda. It would be insane to tell a Buddhist you can't trust them unless they denounce Myanmar and tell them they shouldn't be offended by an art piece of a burning monastery or a slash through a dharma wheel.
Again, the point of the post is that this would be weird to say about other cultures.
"I wouldn't hire a Chinese babysitter when the Chinese are killing Uyghur babies and they'd probably fill my kid's head with propaganda"
"I walked out of a bakery because they sold Persian pastries, they should know it's not okay to support Iran"
"I can't let a Buddhist in my DnD roleplay group unless I know they denounce the actions of Myanmar"
But people don't have a problem with saying the same thing about Jews and Israel. An individual is not their government and the line about Trump is meant to be a glaringly obvious example of that because you'd probably be a little bit upset if everyone you met assumed you support Trump and ICE and colonialism and everyone you met made you prove yourself. A person cannot control where they were born and they cannot control what the government does and putting people in a box because of it is wrong!!!
Reluctancy Waltz @mrshamill - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
