Got some shitty-ass news today.

[conuly]

Which was then topped off with a second application of shitty news. I don't really want to get into the details, but suffice to say I completely lost my appetite for lunch, which was a gyro and ought to have been delicious.

Also, went to Home Depot. They're selling 3D printers, or you can use theirs as a demonstration. The writing next to the demo caused me to make a stunning realization, one I have been completely unaware of since the 10th grade. Drafting wasn't a complete and total waste of time after all!

Damn, if I could go back in time and smack myself into passing that class, I would. But I couldn't. A lot of awful things caught up to me my sophomore year, and having a sucky class first period was not something I could cope with. Some of the reasons I failed were beyond my control, most were the sort of things that ought to not have been beyond my control, but really, kinda were. Drafting, ladies and gentlemen, is a good 73% of the reason I transferred out of Stuy. And now I find out that it could've been useful. Fuck it all to hell.

To sum up, I am eating a bialy for late dinner. That made my day a little better.

***********************

Swiss cheese hole mystery solved: It's all down to dirt

NSA preps quantum-resistant algorithms to head off crypto-apocalypse

GMOs: Myth vs. Fact (via America's Finest News Source)

Why Sticking a Pair of Eyeballs on a Sign Actually Changes Behavior

Power companies may have found a new way to crack into the solar business

The pronoun 'I' is becoming obsolete

Narcolepsy medication modafinil is world's first safe 'smart drug'

Ghostly Particles from Outer Space Detected in Antarctica

The forgotten history of 4 everyday inventions that were supposed to change the world

First-time Texas drug felons to be eligible for food stamps again

Gut microbes linked to major autoimmune eye disease

In New Orleans' Hardest-Hit Neighborhood, A Recovery — By Sheer Will

Stem cell treatment halts MS progression in 91% of patients

The day I removed a toy dinosaur from a woman's vagina

Wormhole Created in Lab Makes Invisible Magnetic Field

Mauritania upholds conviction of anti-slave activists

People with psychopathic traits are less likely to 'catch' a yawn than empathetic folks

Google ordered to remove links to stories about Google removing links to stories

L.A. 'Shade Ball' Rollout a 'Potential Disaster'

The Jared Fogle case: Why we understand so little about child sex abuse

In Orwellian fashion, Americans have been stripped of the right to walk.

Mexico finds 63 children working in vegetable packing firm

Australia has denied environmental approval to just 18 projects since 2000

Macedonia: State of emergency declared over migrants

U.S.: ISIS mortar tests positive for sulfur mustard agent

Comments

> The pronoun 'I' is becoming obsolete

[siderea]

How forward-thinking of English to have the same singular and plural second-person pronoun. Good thing we're moving in the direction of "singular" they in the third.

[adrian_turtle]

The article about walking looked like a haphazard collection of complaints about sprawl and cities being designed for the convenience of drivers. There was a little about people thinking of walking as peculiar, or as something one did specifically for exercise, but I didn't see any mention of anything Orwellian. did not seem to have anything new to the 21st century, except the Fitbit.

This spring, I read an awful book by Dan Rubenstein (Dave Rubenfield? Something like that) called "Born to Walk." It seems to deliberately blur the distinctions between walking a mile to work every morning and hiking the Appalachian Trail. As well as the distinction between encouraging and coercing healthy behavior, and the distinction between cardiac health and other kinds (such as joint injuries.) Most annoying, the book applauds "broken windows" and "stop and frisk" policing.

If we are going to talk about Orwellian loss of a walkable world, I believe we need to talk about the police stopping people for walking. Because walking is considered a suspicious activity, or because the police are suspicious of some groups of people no matter what they do and they just want to stay out of sight. Our because the

[siderea]

Also, I feel the need to mention, when I was given a bag of little plastic dinosaurs as a four year old, my mother expressly and explicitly forbade me from putting them in my vagina.

So help me, my immediate thought at her injunction was, "WHY WOULD YOU NEED TO TELL ME THAT? What kind of idiot puts plastic dinosaurs in her vagina? To whom does this sound like an appealing idea? What about it is appealing?"

I kind of feel that my questions have not been answered by that article.

[conuly]

Hey, your comment gets cut off.

Because walking is considered a suspicious activity, or because the police are suspicious of some groups of people no matter what they do and they just want to stay out of sight. Our because the

[conuly]

Did she give you that rule with other toys?

[siderea]

It wasn't so much a rule as an order. Like, there was no, "Or else." It wasn't like "you are not allowed to do that." It was "Don't do that."

And, no, she never felt the need to tell me, or AFAIK my sister, that about any other toy.

Nor about any other orifice.

Are... are little plastic dinosaurs obviously erotic to some percentage of the adult population? Such that they would look at a little plastic dinosaur and think, "Well I can certainly see why my kid would want to shove this up her hooch, I'd better mention"?

I mean, we had Lincoln Logs and it never came up.

[adrian_turtle]

Sorry about that. I was trying to type on my phone, which is terrible for long comments. The last paragraph should be:

If we are going to talk about Orwellian loss of a walkable world, I believe we need to talk about the police stopping people for walking. Because walking is considered a suspicious activity, or because the police are suspicious of some groups of people no matter what they do and they just want to stay out of sight. Or because vulnerable people want to look like respectable people who can drive their own cars, as well as staying out of sight. A person is more likely to get stopped for "walking while black" than for "driving while black," (given similar police prejudice) just because they're exposed to police scrutiny for so much more time.

[conuly]

Huh. I have NO idea what to say about that, but feel I should reply.

[conuly]

If we are going to talk about Orwellian loss of a walkable world, I believe we need to talk about the police stopping people for walking.

I have exactly one word for THIS and that's "fuckedup".

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I'm sorry to hear you got shitty news; hope you're okay.

[conuly]

Physically, we are all fine. When things get settled I'll tell everybody all about it.