A target of the investigation… another shoe is about to drop. Let’s hope we get this done before the election.
Finished Reading: One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston 📚
Loved! Couldn’t put it down. Fantastic beach or summer read if you like well written romance novels. It reminded me in some ways of Time and Again by Jack Finney. Not quite as much a historical novel and from an LGBTQ+ frame. Highly recommend!
So far as I can tell, the #2024 #election is about whether we want #authoritarian rule or not. I wish it were about other things. But we have to settle the authoritarian question first.
Literature and Empathy :: Essays On Attention Paid
One of the very interesting things that happened as I worked on it, read it, worked it, read it, and worked it some more, is that physical intimacy between women shifted towards physical intimacy between human beings. It started to seem natural that women could engage in a profound and satisfying physical and emotional relationship and that I could identify with that empathically. I started to be less the voyeur, and more a compassionate witness.
No Labels has already lost one of its co-founders, William Galston, over its push for a third-party ticket; Galston resigned in protest this spring over the possibility that the bid could tip the election to Trump. Democratic members of the No Labels–backed Problem Solvers Caucus in the House have disavowed the effort for the same reason. The moderate Democratic group Third Way is adamantly opposed to the idea, and a new bipartisan group is forming to stop it.
Since then, the fiscal note has been at an impasse: Bailey won’t certify it, Fitzpatrick won’t cave, and there’s no other route for the process to move forward. “The law doesn’t even contemplate that we’d be in this situation,” says Tony Rothert, advocacy director for the ACLU of Missouri. “And what has happened is, no one has done anything.” In May, the ACLU of Missouri filed a lawsuit against Bailey, trying to get a court to force him to approve Fitzpatrick’s original estimate. Last month, a lower court agreed, ordering Bailey to certify the fiscal note. Yet when Bailey appealed, he was allowed to wait for a state Supreme Court hearing, which is set for July 18. “As long as I’m Attorney General, my office will continue to use every tool at its disposal to protect the unborn,” Bailey said in a press release earlier this month. “Our children are worth the fight.”
Україна Yelena Yemchuk | Conscientious Photography Magazine
If you wanted to, you could divide the world into two parts. One part would contain all those people who are able to control the narrative that surrounds them and who for that reason are in charge of their own destiny. The other part contains all the rest of the people whose story is largely defined by those other people. From what I can tell a much larger fraction of the world is part of the second group. Despite (or rather because of) their enormous privilege, the first group resists changing this situation.
From this monring’s walk
… women’s clothing…
Dinner was Honey Mustard Pork Tenderloin and this:
… i used chestnut mushrooms…
July 17, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson
Because all the institutions of our democracy are designed to support the tenets of democracy, right-wingers claim those institutions are weaponized against them. House Republicans are running hearings designed to prove that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice are both “weaponized” against Republicans. It doesn’t matter that they don’t seem to have any evidence of bias: the very fact that those institutions support democracy mean they support a system that right-wing Republicans see as hostile.
New set of cloth produce bags. One more source of plastic eliminated.
… well, i have a new workflow for getting thoughts down (Drafts) and collecting them in a daily journal (Obsidian) via an action that exports from Drafts to Obsidian… so far, smooth as ice… we’ll see how it holds up over time…
Bleak Records Keep Coming: Heat Waves Are Smothering the Planet – Mother Jones
The grim records keep tumbling: This June was the warmest month on record. This weekend, Death Valley, California, could tie or set the record for the hottest temperature reliably recorded on Earth. In Canada, record-breaking fires continue to burn.
… my wife and i are doing what we can, solar on our roof, composting, little flying, little driving, getting plastic out of waste stream, voting for politicians that might do something about it… i swear at every pickup truck and SUV passing… not enough, but something…
Siena Cathedral Uncovers Breathtaking 14th-Century Mosaic Floors
… wow!… now i want to go to Sienna…
Elizabeth Gould
#nature #birds #illustration #artists-women
From this morning’s walk…
Sometimes songs punch you in the gut… this one does that to me. Tears streaming down my cheeks every time. This version by the Indigo Girls as powerful as the original by GK and Pips: music.apple.com/us/album/…
So much handwringing over the end times, except, it’s just hand wringing. Is there any chance we’ll willingly change our behavior? Or will we ring our hands, normalize it, and move on? Until it all comes crashing down. Which we know it will. In a dark mood…
From this morning’s walk…
Instead of a morning walk my wife and I took a trip down memory lane. We visited our respective high schools which are an hour away from where we live now…
Holly and me in front of my high school building.
My high school building.
Holly and our two dogs in front of her high school building.
The Number of Songs in the World Doubled Yesterday
An artificial intelligence company in Delaware boasted, in a press release, that it had created 100 million new songs. That’s roughly equivalent to the entire catalog of music available on Spotify.
How the EARN IT Act, a Bill to Protect Children Online, Threatens Artists
While officially designed to target CSAM, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and other digital rights groups believe the new bill is actually designed to eliminate privacy online and threaten websites of all sizes into cooperating with authorities. This will result in states having access to everything we once trusted to remain private, the probable demise of end-to-end encryption, and the chilling of freedom of expression across the internet as sites fear prosecution and liability.