Happy first day of #spring!*
*Your region may vary
It's not just birds and bikes that draft. Also whales.
BREAKING: 🐦InternetArchive supporters are planning a digital rally 3/20 in support of the digital rights of libraries at https://www.battleforlibraries.com/
That's when a judge will hear oral arguments in big publishers' suit to end the ability of libraries to own+preserve digital books.
Just #flossed out a #filling. So now I will go to a #dentist and they will remove good #tooth so they can fill it with plastic. This was life-saving #technology back in the day. Surely technology has come a ways since #DrillAndFill? Where are the cutting-edge modern alternatives to mainstream #dentistry that are just not popular yet?
Never get tired a this un...
"Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.
But no.
Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed.
Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die.
You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food.
You are meat for prowling beasts.
No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.
A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery.
Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts, Mead said."
We are at our best when we serve others.
Be civilized.
Two prongs: one, I (mostly) don't blame 'ordinary folks' for falling victim to a coordinated blitzkrieg of billionaire-backed lobbying, billionaire-owned media propaganda, and corresponding policy & messaging from captive gov't, so the COVID shitshow has had near zero effect on my opinion of humanity. And two, I've kind of embraced the apocalyptic video game vibe, navigating hordes of brain-hijacked SARS-CoV2 zombies with my P100 respirator and sealed goggles on. 🤷
Today I learned about the #FDLP - Free document dissemination through the Federal Depository Library Program. #Libraries are such a treasure trove of #resources.
Media literacy as government propaganda
Most "media literacy" courses or lessons that are solely focused on "is the source reliable yes or no" are just encouraging people to get their information from government and other "official" sources.
It's not actually teaching people how to critique and examine media it's teaching them to defer to authority. It's maintaining the status quo
They act like media literacy is going "this centrist newspaper is the most reliable source so I'll only listen to what it says"
@bike @Secretdrinks @Lowie @StillIRise1963
They're probably not the same. The merger was canceled years ago. Please see replies to my original toot for the links and such.
. . . and she placed the chair over the designated spot on the sidewalk.
Into the chair she sat. She refused to budge.
“This went on for days and weeks,” Marshall said, “and finally Grandma Annie emerged as the victor of what may have been the first successful sit-down strike in Maryland.”
For the good part, Thurgood Marshall's life, you'll have to click here because it's too long for a thread:
https://terikanefield.com/he-changed-the-face-of-america/
4/
Yesterday was -30°C. Today it's windy with a snowfall warning. Still committed to being one less car on the road. @TheWarOnCars
How is Medium.com for writers that are not cishet white men? I am looking for a place to write lengthy articles about economics from a non-white perspective, and I feel almost like Medium has a bit of a monopoly on audience and content for this type of thing. It also seems to have a decent user interface, but I'm having a hard time finding feedback on the experience from a perspective that I trust.
As we live in a capitalist hellscape and I require resources to subsist on, I kind of like the option for monetization. However, I also do not want to be hosted by a place that has practices that aren't in alignment with my values. Specifically, does Medium.com demonetize or otherwise harass creators of color or other oppressed minorities?
I can't think of a more graceful way to ask this, so I'm just putting it out there in the way that the question comes to my mind.
There were states that at least had laws on the books outlawing lobbying. Like, 5 year prison sentence for felony lobbying was a thing. I want that back.
Did you know there's a #fediverse alternative to Amazon-owned #Goodreads? #BookWyrm is a social network for tracking your reading, writing reviews, and discovering what to read next. You can follow and interact with users on different #BookWyrm instances and on #Mastodon. You can import from a Goodreads CSV export. You can create private shelves and curated lists. Join us at https://ramblingreaders.org or choose one of the other instances available #books #reading #bookstodon @bookstodon
Today I learned about Ernie Chambers of #Kentucky .
My personal favorite bit from the Wikipedia page is not one of his successes: "introduced a bill to repeal Nebraska's capital punishment law at the start of each legislative session, 36 times over 40 years."
Learn more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_Chambers