Don’t know about anyone else, but I was thinking they are an excellent, versatile and easily prepared protein source, dense with nutrients, which does not involve the taking of a life.

Edit: I’d been thinking of dumping social media entirely, due to the discouraging number of trolls, self-righteous moralists, snarks and ideologues, but thought it would be reddit that went – it really has become depressing to consider the future if redditors are indicative. Guess it’s not just reddit, mmm?

For the amusement of folk jumping to firm conclusions, I have raised chickens, lived on the Indian subcontinent (and you left out the fate of the Eid cows among Muslims – the streets run with blood), eat a lot of beans, and will remember in future that it is wisest to stick to my own company rather than set off people who don’t think I know how to use a search engine.

Tata.

Um… no. Having been an adult in the 1970s, I can testify that people read a great deal more then than they do now, and among the things they read were such optimistic tomes as 1984, I Am Legend, The Death of Grass, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or anything else by Philip K. Dick, The Egghead Republic, anything by Kurt Vonnegut, Silent Spring, the works of Harlan Ellison, and I could go on. Problem was then what it is now: corporations can pay for and broadcast lies faster and louder than a whole lot of worried people can yell and point and warn*. Don’t be fooled by selective hindsight: there were a whole lot of people getting pretty nervous, even in the 1970s, and being told we were worrying needlessly because history could only move one way…

*To quote Jonathan Swift (the probable originator of the idea that Terry Pratchett brought to Millennials) " Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it." (1710)

So, of an estimated 348 million Americans, roughly 3 million, less than 1%, please note, work for the US federal government directly (the Armed Forces are a separate matter and a separate budget). Of those, DOGE has managed to lay off slightly over 2%, while spending 14.4 million dollars on its own operations in just the period of time between January 30 and February 8: after that, no figures have been released.

Why do I keep hearing my Mom’s voice muttering Penny wise, pound foolish?

Ah, but Pimento, mon frère (ou peut-être ma sœur), that would be so boring, and inspire no science fiction whatsoever! It would mean that humanity made things far more complicated than they needed to be because we just can’t wait for more evidence to start hollering that we’ve got it all figured out and my idea is the END OF THE DISCUSSION!

Canadian English, a jumble of Parisien and South Ontario French avec un levain de québécois, Bangladeshi Bangali, and old fashioned Cadre-speak.

Ooooo. You know, that would have been painful, had it not been so entirely off base. Thanks for the laugh…

“The provisions make it difficult to run a business efficiently and provide adequate customer service,” said the sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Sherri Gallick, R-Belton. “The unpredictability threatens the stability of businesses, large and small.”

If that is the case, how is it that businesses, small and large, manage it in every other country in the world except the US, Sri Lanka, South Korea and Somalia for G-d’s sake! I mean, these people are just one step up from Somalia, where there is no sick leave at all!

Um… if you look at the post again, you will find that the doctor in question is a PhD, admittedly in neuroscience, which does produce results used by medical doctors. But there is no indication the woman in question has ever, or will ever, practise medicine in a clinical setting. For that matter, there is only the inference from the mention of a US podcast that she is even American, mmm?

But, then, I infer from your userrname that you are male, and from your post that you are American. So I am not, at this point in history, terribly surprised if you have jumped to a wrong conclusion about the actual content of a woman’s doctorate.

Signed, another woman with a doctorate that has nothing whatsoever to do with practising medicine in the USA, although you’d never know it from the number of Americans who immediately tell me their symptoms upon introduction. (Ah, yes! I think Napoleon died of something similar on Ste. Helena. Or possibly he was poisoned. But then French history is not my field, either.)

Yeah. Sure. Measles can actually destroy the immune system so that it forgets not only that you have had measles, but everything else you’ve developed an immunity to (it’s called immune amnesia) by having the disease or having a vaccine, and face getting the whole mob again. Or, you could be the 1 or 2 people in 1000 who will die, or the 1 in 1000 who will get encephalitis and live, albeit significantly intellectually and physically disabled. Or you could get subacute sclerosing panencephalitis ten years after you had measles, and that’s almost always fatal.

Makes getting shingles after having chicken pox as a kid seem like a walk in the park, mmm?

The Guardian, The Tyee, BBC, CBC, Reuters and AP, with a dash of utterly unreliable press from abroad.

It seems to take more keywords to home in on the kind of speciality items I look for, and does not always appear to detect connections between those keywords, for example in trying to find certain kind of veterinary support devices made to national specifications. One of the other commentors says Kagi is okay for shopping, so maybe I’ll give it a whirl because I’d love to be free of Google once and for all.

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

I’m interested, but a bit reluctant. I find DuckDuckGo quite adequate for most things, except shopping online, something that I have to rely on for certain categories of items. How is Kagi on shopping?

I remember seeing the coverage at the time, and saying to a colleague that Ukraine was making a huge mistake. He scoffed at the idea a middle-aged woman, even one with degrees in highly relevant fields, could grasp geopolitics. And now I’m an old woman, thinking quietly, ‘X, you were an idiot then, and you are an idiot now.’

Thanks: that’s gonna take some practise!

As an old Canadian socialist with the lumps to prove it, I agree. There is so much performance, and so little action. I spend time on reddit, trying to get keyboard warriors to understand that posting an opinion will not magically cause the fascist Administration to collapse and get a lot of “The media refuses to cover us!” bullpuckey. There are thousands of newsrooms in the USA that are not owned by billionaire tech bros or MAGA devotees (see, for example https://www.trustworthymedia.org/ › list-of-independent-media ) and most social media is still wide open to pictures and facts about your actions. If you are acting, let the independent media – most but not all of whom are progressive, check first – know and post your pictures (faces blurred if need be) and stories everywhere you can reach people.

Meantime, buy Canadian, buy local, or don’t buy at all, at least it’s something!

I’ll do this starting NOW, if someone will just post a pronunciation guide! Please?

True or not, one can avoid the whole issue by using your phone as a phone, maybe to send texts, with location, mike, and camera switched off permanently, and all the other apps deleted or disabled. Sure, Google will still know you called your SO daily and your Mom once a week (NOT ENOUGH!), and that you were supposed to pick up the dry cleaning last night (did you?). Meh. If that’s what floats the Surveillance Society’s boat, I am not too worried.

Because life is its own joy, and being alive the greatest gift. The loneliness will pass and return, the work grind you down as a song heard in passing will lift you up, the endless obligations are part of being an inherently social species. But, whether human or crocodilian, garden slug or spider, there is pleasure in the warm sun and a full belly, in waking from a good sleep and stretching whatever muscles your ancestors bequeathed. It’s only those who demand that, somehow, the universe give them some cosmic purpose – we, who are less than a virus floating around a sparkling grain of sand on an endless beach – who cannot find enough in life to be happy.

Are we allowed to use fully spelled out bad language on Lemmy? Because I have a suggestion for Mr. Trump which involves an athletic approach to a rolling doughnut.