If you get mail to someone who doesn’t live with you (such as a previous tenant) the right thing to do is to bounce it.
In the USA, all you have to do is
Write NOT AT THIS ADDRESS on the front.
Scribble out the bar code. You don’t have to get the whole thing, but make sure that there aren’t enough white spaces left to get a good read. That way it will get manual attention and you won’t get it back.
Drop it in any mailbox. The First Class postage always covers the cost of returning undeliverable mail to the sender. Some bulk mail gets returned, too.
These cards can be ordered or printed on you own. They provide a summary of constitutional rights and a brief script to follow if/when needed.
You have constitutional rights: • DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR if an immigration agent is knocking on the door. • DO NOT ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS from an immigration agent if they try to talk to you. You have the right to remain silent. • DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING without first speaking to a lawyer. You have the right to speak with a lawyer. • If you are outside of your home, ask the agent if you are free to leave and if they say yes, leave calmly. • GIVE THIS CARD TO THE AGENT. If you are inside of your home, show the card through the window or slide it under the door. I do not wish to speak with you, answer your questions, or sign or hand you any documents based on my 5th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution. I do not give you permission to enter my home based on my 4th Amendment rights under the United States Constitution unless you have a warrant to enter, signed by a judge or magistrate with my name on it that you slide under the door. I do not give you permission to search any of my belongings based on my 4th Amendment rights. I choose to exercise my constitutional rights. These cards are available to citizens and noncitizens alike
Напередодні представники Міжнародного комітету Червоного Хреста в соцмережах написали, що нещодавні удари по критичній інфраструктурі України та Росії "залишили мільйони людей майже без електропостачання, води та опалення за умов низьких температур в Києві, Дніпрі, Донецьку, Білгороді та інших містах". Ішлося, що такі удари "заборонені". "Напади, що призводять до непропорційної шкоди для цивільних осіб, зокрема, позбавляють їх доступу до життєво необхідних послуг, як-от світло і тепло, які наразі абсолютно необхідні для виживання, заборонені", - заявила регіональна директорка МКЧХ у Європі та Центральній Азії Аріана Бауер.
Глава МЗС України розкритикував цей допис та назвав заяву організації "ганебною", а моральну еквівалентність між агресором і країною, яка захищається, — "хибною і неприйнятною". Відтак голову делегації МКЧХ викличуть до МЗС для пояснень.
Environmental phenomena and their consequences can disrupt social structures and destabilize political systems. An interdisciplinary research team demonstrated this using the example of the late Tang dynasty in medieval China.
We are ourselves devotees of Saint Gustavus Tiddles of Blep. Illustration ca. 1450, Scheibler'sches Wappenbuch, Bavarian State Library.
Texas is supposedly in the process of rolling out its new “school choice” program, the Texas Education Freedom Account (TEFA), to fund private schools with taxpayer money. Many of the schools in the program are Christian, because who cares about the First Amendment anymore? In fact, dozens of schools in the program openly discriminate against non-Christians and LGBTQ folks, because God tells them to. (Bigotry is protected by the First Amendment, after all, and the only real discrimination would be not sending taxpayer funds to bigoted church schools.)
But there’s a catch, because while the state is happy to defund public schools by diverting tax dollars to religious schools, the state comptroller’s office wants to ban some schools from the program. The pretext is that some of the schools allegedly have “connections” to the government of China, or in the case of some Islamic schools, because they’re supposedly “connected” to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim civil rights group that Gov. Greg Abbott declared in November is a “terrorist” group. CAIR is suing over the designation, but hey, a pretext’s a pretext!
As as result, hundreds of schools have been shut out of the voucher program just before applications from parents are supposed to go live — at least for the time being. That’s despite the fact that there are only a couple dozen Islamic private schools in the state, which has already scared some Christian nationalists so much that they opposed the voucher program in the first place, warning that it would fund scary Muslim schools.
So why the holdup for hundreds of schools? As the Houston Chronicle reports (gift link), the comptroller’s request for clarification on banning them from the voucher program has held up approval for nearly every private school accredited by Cognia, the biggest private school accreditor in Texas. As a result, by Tuesday, “only 30 of the 600 schools accredited solely by the nonprofit were added to the list of approved vendors, most of them offering only pre-K and kindergarten.”
And how’s this for the power of the press? Most of those 30 were only added overnight on Monday, after the paper’s reporters started asking questions of state education officials.
The mess will probably maybe be kind of sorted out by the time parents start submitting applications for the voucher program on February 4, but rest assured, this being Texas and a trumped-up culture war panic, the voucher program will nonetheless remain a huge boondoggle.
Wonkette thinks public funding should only go to public schools. Please become a public funder (of us) if you can!
In December, acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock requested an opinion from Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office on whether some schools could be barred from the voucher program if they had links to “foreign terrorist organization” or a “foreign adversary.” CAIR was already suing the state over Abbott’s “terror” designation before Hancock piled on.
Those alleged “links” are pretty damned tenuous: Hancock wants to ban schools that have hosted “Know Your Rights” events in which CAIR was among the participants. As we already know from wingnuts across the nation, telling people the Trump regime may crack down on that they have rights is the same as obstruction of justice, so we can throw some immigration panic into the mix here, too.
“Hosting civil rights education for students is lawful. So is teaching students about their rights under the U.S. and Texas Constitutions,” a spokesperson with CAIR Texas said. “Any attempt to penalize schools for learning about their civil rights from an organization Greg Abbott happens to dislike would raise serious First Amendment concerns.”
Sure, people have “rights” and all that, but what about the sacred right of Republican politicians to shore up political support through fearmongering, huh?
The alleged infiltration of the schools by Chinese Communist Enemy Foreign Influence!!! seems just as tenuous. Hancock claimed that one private school in the state “may be owned or controlled by a holding group linked to foreign adversaries seeking influence over U.S. education, specifically, an adviser to the Chinese communist government.” How many degrees of Kevin Beijing are we talking about here? Damned if we’ve been able to find any details of that alleged “connection.”
But don’t worry, Hancock said he was just asking for legal guidance after “credible concerns” were raised about CAIR and China, and he’s certainly not out to prejudge any of these schools with possible connections to terrorists or the godless Chi-Coms. He just wants to, ummm, “safeguard personal data from foreign adversaries and ensure that no public funds are used, directly or indirectly, in a manner that conflicts with Texas law or undermines the security interests of our state.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket!
In his December request to Paxton’s office, Hancock noted that the schools in question had been accredited by Cognia, but they’re only a handful of the hundreds of schools that have been blocked from approval for the voucher program. At least 15 Islamic schools, all accredited by Cognia, should meet the accreditation standards for the program, but none have been approved.
A Cognia spokesperson told the Houston Chronicle that the nonprofit is aware that schools it accredited have seen delays in their approvals for the voucher program, and that it’s working with the comptroller to resolve the issue. That statement may be nonconfrontational enough to avoid further angering the powers that be, but it’s hardly a great comfort to the schools being singled out for discrimination.
The comptroller’s office said it has implemented “additional safeguards” to “ensure every participating school complies with Texas law,” in accordance with the concerns in Hancock’s letter, but did not explain why other Cognia schools have been unable to register. The program will invite “additional batches” of schools to participate in the coming days, and those requests should be completed and processed quickly, the office said.
“Schools that are not affected by issues referenced in our OAG opinion request should not experience any difficulty participating,” the statement said.
Look, folks, have a little patience. Texas is doing everything it can to exclude Muslims from getting in on the school voucher grift without framing it in a way that would scream “we hate Muslims” too openly. They’ll figure something out.
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From the time I clicked on This Will Destroy All Your Data OK until the time I started this entry. 6 minutes. Everything back in place and operational. This time, it gave me the option of setting up the Chromebook via my phone which saved me some typing. I have loved Chromebooks forever and still do today.
The headline is that my Wegovy will be here next Wednesday. I'm all paid for and confirmed. So, to recap, doctor sent prescription in Monday morning - she said it would take a few hours to get set up to order. I got response Tuesday afternoon. Account set up/ordering Thursday morning. But, could the the January rush.
I met with Harriet and got the agenda for next week all noodled out. Now I just need to do it. I think I'll just go ahead and do it now and get it done.
Flamer by Mike Curato One of my professors (who's also a librarian) mentioned that they'd just gotten this for the library's graphic novel collection because it was on the banned book list yet again. So I picked it up, then left it on the mantel until school ended for the year.
Centred on a teenager in boy scout camp, the summer before high school starts, the story covers about a week of intense emotional turmoil. The Scouts had banned homosexuality, but were filled with homo-erotically charged jokes and behaviour from the boys, as well as overt homophobia, fatphobia and racism. Like the author, the protagonist is mixed race, chubby and gay, and none of those seem to him like they're going to lead anywhere good. He's looking forward to leaving the Catholic school system, where he got religious guilt on top of bullying, but afraid of the big public high school and future bullying. He's desperately in love/lust with his tent-mate, and terrified what might happen if anyone finds out he's gay.
The art is simple grey scale with occasional red and orange, and showcases the juvenile over-exuberance of the characters, and how every emotion is the most emotion anyone has ever felt. Not a whole lot actually happens in this story, but it does a wonderful job of showing how world-endingly monumental the mundane can be at that age, when everything you feel is going to be all you feel for the rest of your life. The specific experiences aren't something I dealt with at that age, but the intensity felt very familiar.
It's a well done story that I think would be very useful to teens and tweens going through similar situations, which I assume is why it's widely banned.
The Claiming of the Shrew by Lauren Esker (Usual disclaimer about knowing the author.)
The reservation system worked! For those not following the Fated Mountain Lodge series, the previous novels have all depended on reservation system mishaps putting people in odd situations, but this time it worked! We're in business, baby! The hero does end up in the Honeymoon Suite because it's the only available room, but that's no one's fault but his.
This is probably tied with its sister novel, Joy to the Squirrel, as my favourite in the series so far, with the fully charged shrew (as in she can turn into a shrew) heroine ready to go out there and solve some crime! Even if she has no experience in solving crime. She's paired with the honeymoon-suit inhabiting trash panda private detective, who does know how to solve crime, but is definitely getting off to a slower start. And there also a theatre troop living in the woods. And a dragon. It's just really, really sweet and fun, with charming characters to root for, and largely pretty low stakes. I really appreciated having a disabled heroine, and how she worked with her disability as a shapeshifter. Absolutely this series at its best.
The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, narrated by James Lloyd (sanguinityjust read this, which made me want to read it again (third or fourth time through), so I did.)
I think Sanguinity does a better job of summing up what's great about this book, but to be brief: Caz, our hero, who has had the worst time of it, is my platonic ideal of an iron woobie. He's just trying to get through the day so he can catch a damn break in some hoped-for future, but unfortunately a variety of gods have other plans for him. Does he set out to save the kingdom? No! He sets out to have a nap, but the nap turns out to be on the other side of some serious political shenanigans, so off he goes. Like it or not. And he very much does not like it.
The book is an exercise in slowly ratcheting up the stakes, until the kingdom's fate rests on the fall of some beads, and just doesn't feel like it's going to work out. I really appreciate Bujold's ability to put the reader through it along with the characters. I also like how though there are heroes and villains (and some convincingly loathsome characters), no one's a panto baddie, who's just evil for the sake of the plot. The story is about corrupting influences, and power turning people into their worst selves, and how to fight back against that, which I appreciated.
I have some thoughts about the theology and world building, which will probably get their own post some day.
The Gifts of the Magpie by Lauren Esker (Know the author, etc.)
The most recent Fated Mountain Lodge book, and the reservation system is... working! But several characters still accidentally get booked into the honeymoon suite, because why not? There were also some fun winter adventures on snowmobiles, and I really liked the set up for the next book's main character.
Unfortunately, that's about all that worked for me. ( slight negativity )
Я писал в прошлом о двух примерах честных рассказов о своем "математическом потолке": Джеффа Безоса, когда он решил бросить физику, и Дагласа Хофштадтера, когда он решил бросить чистую математику. Вот свежий пример еще одного такого рассказа, от прикладного математика Джонатана Горарда, в твиттере (перевод с англ.):
"Я очень ярко помню этот момент... Изначально я поступил в университет с намерением стать чистым математиком, и первые пару лет эта мечта казалась вполне осуществимой. Я обычно занимал первое (или близкое к первому) место на экзаменах, посещал курсы для аспирантов, занимался некоторыми исследовательскими задачами, публиковал статьи. Я убедил себя, что смогу понять любую математическую структуру, если просто запишу правила и немного поразмышляю над ними. Затем, на третьем курсе, я начал посещать аспирантский курс по алгебраической теории чисел. У меня никогда не было особого интереса или интуиции к теории чисел, но я неплохо разбирался в кольцах/модулях/и т.д., и по мере прохождения курса я все больше и больше полагался на свою алгебраическую/геометрическую интуицию, чтобы компенсировать недостаток арифметической.
Однажды я боролся около 5 часов с задачей из одного задачника (доказывая некоторое свойство групп классов) и в конце концов придумал очень громоздкое трёхстраничное алгебраическое доказательство. Затем я увидел, как один из моих друзей посмотрел на ту же самую задачу, подумал около 30 секунд и записал (в стиле "Умницы Уилла Хантинга") красивое, пятистрочное, чисто арифметическое доказательство. Его доказательство было явно правильным способом решения. Моё доказательство было явно неправильным способом. Но я также знал, что даже если бы я смотрел на эту задачу ещё 10 часов, я бы никогда не придумал его доказательство. Мой мозг просто так не работал. [Должен добавить, что этот друг потом стал арифметическим геометром.]
Этот момент был на самом деле чрезвычайно освобождающим. Я тогда понял, что у меня есть выбор: провести остаток жизни, пытаясь догнать таких людей, соглашаясь быть (в лучшем случае) только второсортным чистым математиком, или попробовать заняться чем-то другим, где у меня может быть шанс оказать более серьёзное влияние.
Я также понял, что всё это время я ослеплял себя собственным интеллектуальным самодовольством: всё, что было менее абстрактным, чем самая абстрактная математика, казалось мне неполноценным, низкосортным, как будто ниже моего достоинства. Но реальность была в том, что мои интересы были гораздо шире. Меня интересовала общая теория относительности, гамильтонова механика, математическая биология, автоматическое доказательство теорем, численный анализ, сложные системы и много других вещей. Но эти вещи не соответствовали моему тогдашнему представлению о себе, поэтому я никогда всерьёз не рассматривал возможность заниматься ими. В тот момент я решил перестать подавлять своё любопытство. Я стану прикладным математиком, буду следовать своим случайным интеллектуальным интересам (куда бы они меня ни завели), не беспокоясь о том, достаточно ли они "чисты".
Одно из лучших событий, что когда-либо со мной случалось."
Canada's privacy commissioner is expanding his investigation into Elon Musk's X Corp. following multiple reports that its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok is being used to create and share explicit images of people without their consent.
A team of 15 speed skaters, including eight women led by 2022 Olympic triple medallist Isabelle Weidemann, will compete in long track for Canada in February at the Winter Games in Milan Cortina.
В школьном курсе физики решают задачи типа: если подбросить камень вверх с такой-то начальной скоростью, как быстро он упадет, до какой максимальной высоты долетит итд. В этих задачах пренебрегают сопротивлением воздуха и считают силу притяжения постоянной. И тогда все легко решается - не только при броске строго вверх, но и вбок тоже - движение по параболе.
Но вот что я не знал, и что меня удивило: что если учитывать, как сила притяжения меняется с высотой (предположим, "камень" залетает на высоту сотен километров, а потом падает обратно, и пусть это будет на Луне, без атмосферы), то даже при движении в одном измерении, строго вверх-вниз, нет простого аналитического решения, нет формулы, дающей координаты объекта как функцию от времени. Казалось бы, GMm/R^2, чего уже проще, но нет. Есть параметрическое решение, позволяющее оценить высоту в любое время и время для любой высоты с какой угодно точностью, но нет простой формулы.
Наверное, весь школьный курс физики это такое проход канатоходца, слева не вычислить, справа не объяснить, с трудом находим наипростейшие варианты, которые можно дать школьникам.
Fandom: Star Wars Clone Wars era Pairings/Characters: All the Clone Commanders and the Jedi Council so: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Plo Koon, Aayla Secura, Depa Billaba, Quinlan Vos, Anakin Skywalker, Yoda, CC-5052 | Bly, CC-2224 | Cody, CC-3636 | Wolffe, CC-1004 | Gree, CC-1010 | Fox, CT-7567 | Rex, Doom, Monnk, CC-8826 | Neyo, CC-1138 | Bacara, CC-6454 | Ponds Rating: Gen Length: 4,700 words podfic is 29min 10s Creator Links: written by always_a_slut_for_hc Podfic done by PolynomialPandemic Theme: Crack Treated Seriously, angst (with a happy ending), crack, fix-it, humour
Summary: The Jedi Council was nervous. The Jedi Council was very, very nervous, so much so that the usual meditation-and-releasing-emotions-into-the-Force shtick had failed and High General Mace Windu had broken out the spotchka.
If anything called for drinks, it was discovering that your whole Order was sitting on a primed thermal detonator - well. More like a million of them.
Reccer's Notes: A bit less Crack-Treated-Seriously and a bit more Serious-Treated-Crackily. Starts out super funny, veers into heartbreaking, and then swings right back to being funny again. I love the attention to detail that makes every single character (and there are a lot) feel unique and in character even if they only get a couple lines. The Clone Commanders chat is also super fun and is a feature I've seen used before but never so well with so many characters.
Brom was a fantasy illustrator before he started writing his own books. They all contain spectacular color plates as well as black and white illustrations, which add a lot to the story.
Krampus opens with a prologue of the imprisoned Krampus vowing revenge on Santa Claus, then cuts to Santa Claus being chased through a trailer park by horned goblins, one of whom falls to his death when Santa escapes on his sleigh drawn by flying reindeer.
But he left his sack behind, which is promptly picked up Jesse, who just moments previously was considering suicide because he's basically a character from a country song: he's broke; his wife left him, taking their kid with her, and she's now with the town sheriff; Jesse never had the music career he wanted because of poor self-esteem and stage fright, AND he's being forced to do dangerous drug smuggling by the crime lord who runs the town with help from the sheriff. Santa's sack will provide any toy you want, but only toys; Jesse, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, uses it get his daughter every toy she's ever wanted, so now his wife thinks he stole them and the corrupt sheriff is on his ass again. And so are Krampus's band of Bellsnickles, who also want the sack because it's the key to freeing Krampus...
This book is absolutely nuts. The tone isn't as absurd as the summary might make it sound; it is often pretty funny, but it's more of a mythic fantasy meets gritty crime drama, sort of like Charles de Lint was writing in the 80s. Absolutely the best part is when Krampus finally gets to be Krampus in the modern day, spreading Yule tidings, terrorizing suburban adults, and terrifying but also delighting suburban children.
ЖЖешные трамписты по-английски говорят идеально, без малейшего намека на иностранный акцент, им беспокоиться нечего. LOL. (Агент ICE, кстати, и сам говорит с акцентом.)
Абсолютный неописуемый пиздец. This is America indeed.
Кстати, Трамп сегодня повторил, что Путин готов к миру, а проблема в Зеленском. Украина соглашается на американские пункты, Путин их отвергает и пытается лишить украинцев света и тепла в самую холодную зиму за последние лет двадцать — президент США заключает, что проблема в Украине. This is America too.
Видео:
“Why are you asking me for my papers?” “Because of your accent.”🤔🤔🤔 “YOU have an accent.” “Where were you born?” “Where were YOU born?”
My big fat slowmaxxing winter break reading was Leo Tolstoy’s classic Anna Karenina, or at least that was the plan. The book is over 850 pages long and I had been reading some other stuff during the first half of break, so I don’t know what on Earth made me think I was going to read the thing in six days and have a nice fat book already on my list by January 2nd, even if I hadn’t ended up spilling water all over it on December 30 and needing three full days just to dry it out to a readable condition. (It took at least five days to get it fully devoid of moisture again, even when strategically placed right by a heating vent.) Then I had to go back to work, and so here we are, halfway through January, and I have finally finished it.
It was absolutely worth the time and even the damp interruptions.
While Anna is the title character–and certainly provides one of the main storylines–this book has a pretty large cast of characters, and we spend significant inside-their-head time with at least half a dozen of them. The book opens from the point of view of Anna Arkadyevna’s brother Stepan Arkadyevich, a friendly, good-humored specimen of Russia’s upper class, holding various executive-level government jobs that consist entirely of schmoozing and continually cheating on his long-suffering wife with an absolutely clueless lack of malice about it. We also end up spending a lot of page time with his wife Dolly; with Dolly’s little sister Kitty Schterbatskaya; with Konstantin Levin, a friend of Stepan’s who’s in love with Kitty; and of course, with Count Vronsky, the man Anna blows up her life over, who in the beginning is having a flirtation with Kitty that temporarily blows up Levin’s plans to marry her. We also spend some time with Anna’s husband, who I found to be a particularly fascinating character. A lot of the time we spend with these folks they are not necessarily doing very much, although they are all very busy; Levin is basically a little freak among the Russian aristocracy in that he spends a lot of time in his place in the country, not only managing it and trying to come up with better administrative schemes, but also actually doing the occasional spot of farming himself. He’s got very tortured ideas about what it would mean to fix Russian agriculture and how to be alive, which are oddly relatable if you are the type of person prone to overthinking things sometimes, like me, even if the things he is overthinking are entirely outside of my experience (I have no opinions, tortured or otherwise, about 1870s Russian agricultural improvements). These very close third-person POVs are full of dryly funny observations about the absurdities and hypocrisies of these characters, and yet all of them are ultimately sort of endearing (except Vronsky, who is not necessarily actually a bigger piece of shit than any of these other useless rich idiots but who I just could not ever warm up to). The result is both timeless & universal exploring the human condition etc. and also extremely specific, deeply rooted in the time and place that the story takes place in. The place of the church in society, the influence of various 19th-century social and political movements, the state of the divorce and custody laws, the unsustainable financial state of the Russian nobility, all shape the novel and the events that happen in it profoundly, and it simply could not be the novel that it is if it took place somewhere else or at another time.
It is very hard to try to say anything about this book that smarter people than I haven’t said a million times in the past 150 years, I am sure. I haven’t read all that people have said about it but I really don’t feel like I have the chops to comment on a work like this. For starters, everything I know about 1870s Russia is basically running on knowledge of 1870s England and hoping it’s not that vastly different.
One reason I am under-read in the great Russian novels is that every Russian short story or novella I have ever read has been the saddest thing in the entire world, especially Gogol’s “The Overcoat,” which continues to haunt me even as it’s been several years since I’ve read it. As a result I have been a little hesitant to be like “Yes, I want 870 consecutive pages of that.” But somehow, Anna Karenina ends on a hopeful note, even though Anna rather famously dies by throwing herself under a train. The trick to this is that the train thing is a full fifty pages from the end, and we have to tour the entire rest of the dramatic personae afterwards to see how they are reacting to it. Somehow, this works.
This book is just truly excellent on a craft level. While the whole book is long, its story huge and sprawling and taking place over many years, the sentences and chapters are wonderfully clear and direct, especially compared to a lot of other 19th-century writing that I’ve been exposed to. They are only convoluted and long when a character is having convoluted long thoughts, in which case, they work perfectly to illustrate the confusion, heartbreak, dissociation, or just plain disordered thinking that afflicts the characters. Big credit to translator Constance Garnett, since I certainly wasn’t reading the book in the original Russian.
I am extremely curious to check out some of the many, many, many adaptations that have been made, since I really can’t see how they could get across some of the stuff going on in these characters’ heads. Maybe they don’t. But I will find out!
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Flamer by Mike Curato
